From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Rogers Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs Package Management Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:40:55 -0400 Message-ID: <19124.17591.858644.388902@rgr.rgrjr.com> References: <485b0c380808011427n4d3144eey3f8daf3abac83bf4@mail.gmail.com> <87d45vzt4j.fsf@hagelb.org> <87hbv20ybw.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> <87d45p29zr.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1253328081 24762 80.91.229.12 (19 Sep 2009 02:41:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:41:21 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Rupert Swarbrick Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 19 04:41:14 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Mopsv-0007lq-Po for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2009 04:41:14 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:57266 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Mopsv-0006mG-7l for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:41:13 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Mopsq-0006mB-RT for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:41:08 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Mopsm-0006lz-C0 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:41:08 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=57462 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Mopsm-0006lw-8z for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:41:04 -0400 Original-Received: from rgrjr.com ([216.146.47.5]:46856) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Mopsl-0002Bg-Tr for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:41:04 -0400 Original-Received: from rgrjr.dyndns.org (c-66-30-196-77.hsd1.ma.comcast.net [66.30.196.77]) by rgrjr.com (Postfix on CentOS) with ESMTP id 7F947160127 for ; Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:40:58 +0000 (UTC) Original-Received: (qmail 6848 invoked by uid 89); 19 Sep 2009 02:40:57 -0000 Original-Received: from unknown (HELO rgr.rgrjr.com) (192.168.57.1) by home with SMTP; 19 Sep 2009 02:40:57 -0000 Original-Received: by rgr.rgrjr.com (Postfix, from userid 500) id B2BB248588; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:40:56 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM viewmail-600 under 23.1.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:115477 Archived-At: From: Rupert Swarbrick Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:50:04 +0100 . . . One thing to bear in mind is that shared libraries on unix are probably a simpler problem than emacs libraries: I can install multiple versions of libfoo and the dynamic linker will select the correct one for an application. Trying to install multiple versions of an emacs package would result in a godawful mess, because it's not just a list of functions that can be called. I don't know how one could solve that, so I suspect that the only solution is to only allow one version of a package at once . . . Rupert This does not seem so hard. If the "installed" location depended on the Emacs version, e.g. by having the version number as part of the directory name, then you could easily have one version of a package per Emacs version. The downside is that if you want to have all X versions of Emacs on a given system find the "same" package, you would have to install that package X times. But this seems like a small price to pay to be certain that each installed package version is known to work with that version of Emacs -- and that it has been byte-compiled by the right version of the byte compiler. FWIW, I don't usually have more than one version of Emacs per system. So, for packages installed by the sysadmin, I think version-dependence would rarely be an issue. But if I'm not the sysadmin, and have to install packages in my shared home directory, version-dependence could be quite important if I need to use a variety of Emacsen on different systems. -- Bob Rogers http://www.rgrjr.com/