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

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Stefan Monnier writes:

 > Can you describe how does the XEmacs-package-building relates to the
 > VCS repository?

It doesn't restrict the repository in any way.  The XEmacs package
build system puts the packages into a specific layout (basically
similar to an installed GNU Emacs of 19.x vintage, without the bin
directory and with no libraries in the top level of the lisp/
directory, only subdirectories containing packaged libraries).  The
build system has sufficient flexibility to handle the AUCTeX source
layout, and any future variation of it that I can imagine without
hallucinogens.  Updating it to handle future changes to AUCTeX's
source layout is *purely* our problem.

AUCTeX's build system does the same job in a different way.  The two
systems have different purposes.  AUCTeX's is to avoid a requiring
that its users and developers maintain a specific build environment
just for XEmacs packages.  Ours is to guarantee that our distributed
packages are built in a controlled environment.

As far as I can see, neither of these should affect GNU Emacs or GNU
ELPA for quite a while.  I think the Emacs maintainers should be
vaguely aware of the build environment issue, because there's a
possibility that as ELPA expands and becomes widely used,
inconsistencies among packages distributed stand-alone may arise.

However, since Emacs has a policy of eschewing support for non-GNU
systems when that conflicts with the optimal support for GNU, I think
ELPA will find it much easier to support AUCTeX's build system
directly.  It's difficult for us because it depends on utilities that
are normally not present on Windows, for example.