Re: [AUCTeX-devel] [ELPA-diffs] /srv/bzr/emacs/elpa r312: Update AUCTeX ELPA package to the new 11.87 release.

[Ralf Angeli <angeli@caeruleus.net>]

* Tassilo Horn (2012-12-05) writes:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>> Use elpa/packages/auctex as the official upstream.
>>
>>> We are planning to migrate to some DVCS anytime soon, but since
>>> AUCTeX is expected to work with all Emacs versions >= 21.x plus
>>> XEmacs >= 21.4.x, there's no way to develop it only as a part of
>>> emacs in its bzr repo, although that would be very nice from a
>>> maintenance point of view.

Since we want to make standalone releases for older Emacsen and XEmacs,
we'd also have to keep the build system.

>> I don't see what prevents it.  AFAICT it still contains all the
>> backward compatibility code that's in CVS and nobody asked to remove
>> it.  If there are a couple more xemacs-specific files, I have no
>> objection to you adding them.
>
> I'd welcome this but David and Ralf are more qualified to judge about
> feasibility.  Especially, there's much complexity in auctex's build
> system in order to compile XEmacs packages, and that's a bit more than
> just an auctex-compat.el.

Another reason to keep the build system is the possibility to install
preview.sty and its documentation in a TeX system tree.  You can do this
with `preview-install-styles' as well, but only for your user, unless
you have sudo or root access.  So I dunno if a site-wide install of
AUCTeX and preview would be easily feasible with just the Emacs package
system.

>> The only remaining problem I can imagine is for those few files which
>> aren't FSF-copyright and hence aren't in the ELPA package, but IIUC
>> these are obsoletish and could just be dropped (noone complained about
>> them missing from the ELPA version).
>
> Yes, these 5 or 6 files are only addons for some special latex styles.
> They are not important for auctex, and they could be dropped or easily
> rewritten by someone else with CA by just looking at the corresponding
> latex style but not the current code.

If we don't get the CAs I wouldn't mind either deleting those files.

-- 
Ralf