Re: New DFSG-compliant emacs packages
Jérôme Marant <jerome@marant.org> writes:
> Le jeudi 26 octobre 2006 21:06, David Kastrup a écrit :
>
>> It _is_ already true. It is not possible to find anybody on either
>> the Emacs or XEmacs developer lists who could understand or use the
>> the Debian packaging implementation. I tried, as AUCTeX
>> maintainer. That has nothing to do with the doc/code split. I am
>> just saying that one need not consider maintainers/developers of
>> Emacs or XEmacs based applications since they can't work with the
>> Debian packaging, anyway. Asking on either developer list will
>> have people tell you "I tried a few times, then gave up". So
>> active Emacs/XEmacs package developers are out of the loop, anyway.
>> The Debian packages cater to users only.
>
> David, you keep complaining about the way Emacs is packaged in
> Debian. We got that. But you never came up with solutions that
> would fullfil both you and the practical benefits we've tried to
> offer our users through the current implementation so far (even if
> you think we failed to do so).
It is not like I have not mentioned them several times. For one
thing, don't play games with the directory structure of the Emacsen.
XEmacs has a package system with directories. Adding another tree for
Debian packages that is late in the load order is perfectly well
supported. Similarly, adding a directory or tree to search in Emacs
is perfectly well supported, too.
Debian installs source Elisp files and the compiled files into
different directories. This is a mistake. Call the command
M-x list-load-path-shadows RET
and see how Emacs and XEmacs complain. Whether you copy the files or
symlink them: the Elisp files that Emacs/XEmacs find have to be in the
same directories as the corresponding compiled Lisp files, and
certainly in the same position in load-path.
That is a fundamental assumption of both Emacs and XEmacs that gets
violated by the Debian packaging system.
As a result, installing user packages into the (XEmacs) user package
tree overriding Debian packages is not really feasible.
> Now, how about you describe straight how you'd see it to be
> implemented and we begin constructive discussions instead, please?
> Thanks.
It is not like I have not explained this several times already.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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