I've looked at this some, and it looks to me like it is a change in the
upstream build system. I can confirm that the problem arrived in Guix when
the package version was updated from 1.7 to 1.8. In particular, it looks
like lispdir is no longer being set by configure. The configure from 1.7
has
```
if test "x$lispdir" = x; then
lispdir='${datarootdir}/emacs/site-lisp'
fi
```
while the configure from 1.8 does not mention lispdir at all.
I'll ask the recutils upstream if this was intentional.
In the meantime, what do we want to do in Guix? I see two options: one is
patching the build system, and the other is adding a phase to install the
elisp files. The latter seems to me like the clearest and easiest
approach here.
Thoughts?
Best,
Jack