Re: Emacs addon packages--compile upon install?

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu (Ben Pfaff) writes:

> I am trying to remember the rationale we had for making Emacs' addon
> packages compile when they install themselves, and I can't remember
> it.  Perhaps you can remind me.

The main reasons I recall were that we didn't want to have 4 (or more
later) different copies of each package on all the ftp sites, and we
didn't want to have to have every add-on package maintainer install
*every* flavor of emacs.  We also didn't want to have to have add-on
package maintainers worry about whether or not they needed to build a
new release every time any emacs package was upgraded.  Since the
packages re-compile themselves on upgrade or install, they are less
sensitive to emacsen main pacakge changes.

If we need to revisit this discussion, we can...

> Unless there's a really good reason, I think it might be better
> strategy to more towards something closer to the w3-el model, i.e.,
> one binary package for each Emacs version: for instance, bbdb-e19,
> bbdb-e20, bbdb-x19, bbdb-x20.  There could be a bbdb-common or
> bbdb-doc for shared files.

IMO a better solution is to set things up so that you don't re-compile
on every upgrade.  Quite a number of the recopiles are probably
redundant (especially when it's only the debian revision of the add-on
package that's changing).  I've proposed a solution to this, but I
haven't gotten much feedback from the people it would affect (the
add-on package maintainers), and I also don't have the time to
implement it right now.

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930