From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Don Armstrong Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Debian's idiosyncratic complexification of Emacs [Was: Emacs vista build failures] Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:38:45 -0700 Message-ID: <20080715013845.GX3675@rzlab.ucr.edu> References: <4eb0089f0807111345h13eccdds9b2cf43370b94074@mail.gmail.com> <4eb0089f0807121340x5e26f6dbve03ef50b238f3a3a@mail.gmail.com> <87k5fph5rh.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <20080713214648.GB1076@muc.de> <487A783B.7060603@gmail.com> <20080713232635.GD1076@muc.de> <85od51id2t.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <20080714204242.GH6711@volo.donarmstrong.com> <20080714223059.GG3445@muc.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1216085955 4124 80.91.229.12 (15 Jul 2008 01:39:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:39:15 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jul 15 03:40:02 2008 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 1KIZWK-0005Gs-OS for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:40:01 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54076 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KIZVQ-0000AZ-UR for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:39:04 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KIZVM-00008K-8v for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:39:00 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KIZVK-00006S-LO for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:38:59 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=42343 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KIZVK-00006P-Gm for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:38:58 -0400 Original-Received: from rzlab.ucr.edu ([138.23.92.77]:39142) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KIZVJ-0003Eg-Aj for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:38:58 -0400 Original-Received: from rzlab.ucr.edu (archimedes.ucr.edu [138.23.92.79]) by rzlab.ucr.edu (8.13.8/8.13.8/Debian-3) with SMTP id m6F1cjPa030393 for ; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:38:46 -0700 Original-Received: (nullmailer pid 6896 invoked by uid 1000); Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:38:45 -0000 Mail-Followup-To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080714223059.GG3445@muc.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: 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:100709 Archived-At: On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > Those ~2 hours of my life are permanently lost, they're gone for > ever, I'll never get them back again. Perhaps I'm being elitist, but it took me all of 5 minutes to look up the documentation for this, and rework through how this all was done. > However, if that had been his intention, surely he would have done > what he actually did, just with a dose of malice thrown in. And no, it's not me. > Tell me, why is it considered helpful to include a content-free > site-start.el? We don't include a content-free site-start.el; here is its content: ;; Emacsen independent startup file. All of the various installed ;; flavors of emacs (emacs 19, emacs 20, xemacs) will load this file ;; at startup. Make sure any code you put here is emacs flavor ;; independent. ;; Package maintainers: do not have Debian packages edit this file. ;; See the policy manual for the proper way to handle Emacs package ;; initialization code. > The only thing this does is to prevent the loading of the > site-start.el in the standard Emacs place, i.e. > /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/ (This is documented on page "Init > File" of the Emacs manual.) Configuration files such as site-start.el need to be in /etc by FHS, and by Debian policy. > I do not see the purpose of this extra layer of complexity that > Debian has wrapped around (X)Emacs. The purpose is to make it possible for packages to work on specific versions of emacs, all versions of emacs, for users to modify the files and have their changes automatically respected, and to allow for add-on packages to be easily installed and automatically configured to work site-wide without the need for users to modify their own .emacs files or do anything else to deal with it. There may be better implementations of that complexity, but the features that it gives are necessary, and frankly aren't something that upstreams spend much time contemplating. Don Armstrong -- why the hell does kernel-source-2.6.3 depend on xfree86-common? It... Doesn't? good point http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu