Re: Emacs Package Management

[Stephen Eilert <spedrosa@gmail.com>]

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On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Richard M. Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>     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?
>
> We could treat them the same way as if they were included in the
> usual Emacs distribution, in effect spitting that distribution into parts.
>

To sum it up: there *is* interest in a packaging feature, and the issues
seem to be mostly in the area of copyright assignment. If that's correct,
this is good.

ELPA is a nice starting point. But I think it is disproportionally easy to
download packages, as opposed to submitting them. For single files, I would
very much like to have a M-x submit-package, and have it do anything
required to upload it, adding licenses and so on. I don't mind if packages
have to be approved for inclusion in official repositories, but it should be
easy to upload them. For FSF packages, it could sign them with the user's
key.

Dependencies management is also nice, but we'd have to have a way to
identify packages.

And, most importantly, failing packages should not interrupt emacs startup.
I've implemented a simple system(for my own use) where it creates a buffer
with package load status. Failing packages are skipped, but obviously there
is no way to undo side-effects.


--Stephen

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

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