Re: Keeping an ELPA checkout

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:06:38 -0400 Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> wrote: 

CY> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> But ELPA packages are... packages!  Everything in emacs/lisp is source
>> code, meant to work as you describe.  Some ELPA packages happen to be
>> single-file libraries but you are trying to skip the installation and
>> activation steps which track dependencies, byte-compile, and adjust the
>> load path.

CY> Currently, we only have a script for deploying the elpa branch to an
CY> archive, i.e. to a place from which the packages can be installed.

CY> With a bit more work, we could add another script (or a Makefile rule)
CY> for *installing* all the packages in the archive to a given location (or
CY> even in place).  By pointing `package-directory-list' to that directory,
CY> one would have all the packages in the archive installed in one step.
CY> This is probably what Stefan has in mind.

That seems like a useful package.el feature that can be driven from a
Makefile and it can be used to easily run a full build test against the
GNU ELPA in particular.

But is it just for the GNU ELPA or for ELPA in general?  If the latter,
Phil Hagelberg and Tom Tromey will probably have feedback to make it
easier to implement and I imagine they've done something similar.

Ted