Re: Emacs Package Management

["Stephen Eilert" <spedrosa@gmail.com>]

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On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 5:04 AM, Richard M. Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>    Some unbundled Elisp packages (and some bundled ones as well, sadly)
>    have all kinds of nasty flaws.  Using CL is the least of my worries in
>    this arena,
>
> Perhaps we can't do anything about flaws in the Lisp programs that are
> distributed independently of us.  Their developers never made any
> commitment to follow our standards.  But FSF-copyrighted programs
> are GNU packages, and have maintainers who have undertaken to do so.
>

In the context of package management, who's going to enforce those package
restrictions? Should packages be approved manually before being added to
whatever repository we devise?

There are many possible uses for a packaging system. One of them is making
it easier to install packages that are *not* part of Emacs. In this context,
making it harder to submit packages is probably not a good idea. AFAIK,
there's no M-x send-paperwork yet...

There's another possible use: to enable the distribution of a "lightweight"
Emacs, removing a lot of packages that are currently bundled but providing
an easy way to get and install them. This was not my initial motivation, but
I can see some utility in that approach. In this case, it's obvious that the
packages should conform to whatever standards the FSF wants to enforce.


--Stephen

programmer, n:
       A red eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate
monsters.

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