Re: In Support of ELPA

[phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > The difference is whether the Emacs maintainers have write access
>   > > to those sources in their main repository.
>
>   > Personally, I think this is not necessary. The Emacs maintainers can use
>   > PRs if they need to.
>
> We need to have write access directly so that we can install changes
> directly without depending on anyone else.  But not solely write access.
> We need administrative access too.  When other people send PRs, we need
> to be able to receive them.

I don't think this is necessary, not with a distributed version control
system. If we have a package developed elsewhere, and ELPA has a local
clone (either as a repo, or a branch), then any PRs from others could be
resent to the downstream, and likewise any changes for Emacs
maintainers.

On the occasion that a change really needs to be installed locally
without depending on any one else, then you could just do
this. Subsequent pulls from downstream to ELPA would now fail, as they
would be non-fast-forward; someone would have to sort this out
manually. But this is the situation anyway, if there is a downstream
copy of the source code; changes made on ELPA have to be incorporated
back into the mainline.

What sort of changes do you envisage where a PR is not enough? How often
do these happen?

Phil