XEmacs, TeX, and Re: Lengthy Debian install procedures
Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca> writes:
> On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Pat O'Brien wrote:
> > > In addition to the packager apparently being slower, and the
> > > unnecessary interaction, many Debian packages do a lot of unnecessary
> > > computation: recompiling elisp files 3 or 4 times, recompiling TeX
> > > formats, etc.
> are there good reasons these tasks cannot be backgrounded so the install
> can go on without them?
There might be some issues of stepping on the toes of other scripts.
The postinstalls for emacs packages might recompile some common
directories. (The emacs thing is made worse by the fact that the
pre-defined package sets seem to install two versions of emacs - I'm
not 100% sure of this because I use it in combination with apt.)
It would be nice if we could come up with a different solution. I
guess I could always ignore all of the emacs packages and build my
own. Before I ran out of time, I would compile XEmacs myself.
I don't understand why we are recompiling the TeX formats, can the
maintainer comment? It seems to take quite a while and it may be
happening more than once.
BTW, this brings up another impending issue: XEmacs 21.x has it's own
package system, along with a _lot_ of packages (all of the elisp
traditionally distributed with XEmacs has been broken into pieces).
How is Debian going to deal with this? Add 100 packages to the
distribution for XEmacs alone? Put everything in one package?
(This is similar to the perl module issue.) Maintainer comment?
Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu
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