Re: feature/package+vc 04c4c578c7 3/4: Allow for packages to be installed directly from VCS

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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>
> If the main purpose of this feature is for people to test, debug and
> develop the development version, I think it is wiser not to speak
> of "installing" from VCS.

Not necessarily, another advantage might include the ability to maintain
personal changes that don't get overridden by updates.  There are
certainly other reasons to do so that I cannot think of right now.

In general I would like to see something like "package-vc" being
regarded as a means to make software freedom more practical/perceptible.
Emacs per se already does a great job in this regard, by enabling the
user to study the source of any command or functionality with minimal
overhead (usually just a M-x find-function away), but I believe that
features like this can improve this spirit further.

> Presenting the feature as a way to "install" would encourage people
> who are not really thinking of testing, debugging or developping the
> package, and motivated only by a vague wish for "the latest thing."

I agree that people might think of this idea, but then again what is the
issue if they do?  The installation is parallel (but preferred when
loading) to any other installation, be it local or system-wide, and if
they decide to revert they just have to uninstall the "source" package.

> I suggest that we are better off if we avoid encouraging them.
>
> One way to avoid that is to have this feature simply check out the
> package's development sources.  If you know how to work with Emacs
> Lisp, you will not find it hard to byte compile that and use it.  We
> can even document the natural ways to proceed and do those things, and
> people who are really prepared to test it will do them.  But newbies
> probably won't go that far.

I proposed a library along those lines last year that would automate
this (it was called "site-lisp.el" in case you want to look the
discussion up).  It automatically byte-compiles, prepares autoloads and
adds the directory to the load path for all files/directories in
~/.config/emacs/site-lisp.  I still use it for a number of my personal
projects, but it doesn't do the same thing as package-vc, so I wouldn't
consider them to be mutually exclusive.  What I do believe is that by
default, what you have to do to prepare and load some foreign code is
unnecessarily cumbersome/repetitive.