Bug#157123: project: modify emacs policy
Package: project
Version: N/A; reported 2002-08-17
Severity: minor
-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux computer 2.4.6-1 #1 Thu Aug 30 18:26:54 EDT 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=
Hello
Debian's emacs policy seems to be such that additional packages delete
the .el files after installing the package. The .el files hardly cost
any space in comparison to the .elc files, you might as well leave
them there--- we emacsers rely on .el files being right next to the
.elc files. I understand there's a emacs-el or such package that will
install the el files, but this is not true of packages. Thus, i don't
have the emacspeak files, etc. etc.
One can apt-get source the package, but that is not the same as
restoring the package files in the proper directories. It is useful
that Emacs's load-path have access to the .el files... Many emacs'
features like M-x find-function etc. rely on that aspect of .el files.
Currently, the only way for me to have the .el files show up in load-path is:
[1] build the package by hand. pain.
or
[2] apt-get source the package, and add all .el path locations for
each package manually. pain again.
or
[3] apt-get source the packages in one central location, and request
emacs to recursively add that entire location in the load-path. That
is very dangerous, since some packages could have examples/
directories, where they have sample .el's that 'break' existing emacs
functionality. Adding those to load-path would be bad.
IMHO, the .el files should be next to the .elc files. That hardly
takes up any more space. Also, Not only do emacsers expect that and
rely on that, but emacs's built-in functions rely on that too.
Please mail any replies back to me at:
deego@glue.umd.edu
OR
deego@redirectme.gnufans.org
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