Hello, * * * Let me introduce myself. I was prompted to get involved in Emacs packaging for Debian by learning of the security deficiencies of package.el [1]. Further, I would like to help develop the Debian elpa-* namespace as a stable source of the most popular and useful packages that all work together; MELPA Stable is a great service but sometimes packages in MELPA Stable have unstable dependencies etc. And due to needing to get copyright assignment from hundreds of github contributors, most of this good stuff just won't ever make it into Emacs core. From my point of view, Debian Stable is a good substitute for that. * * * Looking back through the list archives, there was some discussion of packaging Spacemacs [2]. I've never used Spacemacs myself but I know that it is wildly popular among people who are coming to Emacs or who have used Emacs for less than a few years. I want to package Spacemacs so these people can just apt-get it. The Spacemacs installation process is to replace ~/.emacs.d with a clone of the Spacemacs repository, which includes an init.el. So Spacemacs is neither a full Emacs distribution nor just an ELPA package. So I think it needs to be packaged as a traditional Emacs addon (like Org-mode) rather than a simple dh_elpa package. Then the question is what to do about init.el. The file is quite short [3]. My ideas: 1. add the (patched) init.el to /usr/share/emacs24/site-lisp and suggest in Readme.Debian that the user replace their ~/.emacs.d/init.el with a `load-file' call to the Debian spacemacs-init.el. 2. put the whole (patched) init.el in Readme.Debian and suggest the user put it in their home directory 3. provide a shell script spacemacs-activate which does (1) or (2), perhaps backing up/restoring an existing ~/.emacs.d/init.el Since I'm new to Debian packaging I'd like to get feedback on these alternatives before proceeding. Thanks. Sean [1] https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2015/11/editor-malware.html [2] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs [3] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/master/init.el
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