Re: Xemacs needs a real maintainer
Quoting Uwe Brauer <oub@mat.ucm.es>:
> On 10 Mar 2004, jmarant@free.fr wrote:
>
>
> >> I forget to add one important thing of course, the Xemacs package
> >> system which allows on the fly actualization. Emacs has nothing
> >> similar.
> >
> > According to what I read, it is not a missing feature, it is an
> > unwanted feature. I'm personaly happy with packages provided as
> > debian packages, so i don't need to grab the big bunch of packages I
> > don't use (emacs21-support or alike).
>
> Just a moment,
Warning: I don't want this debate to turn into another war, that
has no place among emacsen users.
> Maybe we are talking about different things, Xemacs comes with a
> package styem comprable to the debian system, that is only core lisp
> packages are shipped, addtionally pkg have to be installed with a
> utility called PUI. So the Xemacs user does not have to download the
> lisp files, unpack them, and byte compile it. Now like a debian user
> he just grab install and then upgrade the package he wishes. As a
> debian user you *should* love this.
Except that you cannot keep track of packages you installed throught
dpkg -l.
Furthermore, I checked myself available XEmacs packages (in the CVS
package CVS), some of them are outdated, mostly because:
- noone cares for maintaining them (ada mode, ibuffer mode, ...)
- some of them come from a sync with the GNU tree and require
more tweek, which requires manpower)
I'm not saying this package system is bad, but that it is not
always up-to-date.
> Now you mean an unwanted feature for the Emacs people? well sometimes
> the additional lisp packages shipped with Emacs are quite old, in one
> case gnus more that 1 1/2 years old.
Unwanted feature for the Emacs upstream, yes. The GNU shipped with
Emacs is not the one from gnus.org, and almost everyone use the
debian package.
> Or you mean for the debian people?
>
> In both case I disagree. For debian you can see that some package are
> just not up to date, and besides this is just doubled work and not
> necessary.
This is not entirely true. XEmacs packages are not directly grabbed
from upstream places. They require some work for being integrated
in the package tree at xemacs.org.
--
Jérôme Marant
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