Re: Debian's idiosyncratic complexification of Emacs

[Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@ieee.org>]

On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:43:03 -0400, Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> said: 

> Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> writes:
>>> The only thing this does is to prevent the loading of the
>>> site-start.el in the standard Emacs place, i.e.
>>> /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/ (This is documented on page "Init
>>> File" of the Emacs manual.)
>> 
>> Configuration files such as site-start.el need to be in /etc by FHS,
>> and by Debian policy.

> Why not put a line in the regular site-start.el -- the one in the
> Emacs-standard location, not the one in /etc/emacs/site-start.el --
> that loads /etc/emacs/site-start.el?

> Or if the problem is that Debian isn't allowed to touch anything under
> /usr/local/, then put code in /etc/emacs/site-start.el that loads
> /usr/share/.../site-start.el and /usr/local/share/.../site-start.el
> (and same for any other potentially blocked 'site-start.el's).

        While Debian maintainers can not touch anything under
 /usr/local, Debian install emacs with the PREFIX=/usr, and
 /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.el Could be made to load the file
 under /etc.

> Wouldn't that solve all the problems here?

        Either the symlink or the modified version put in
 $PREFIX/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.el will solve the issue, yes. 

> Do you need a bug filed at bugs.debian.org, or is this email enough?

        I'll file the bug report. Mind you, I am not the maintainer, so
 I can't guarantee how fast it will be acted upon, but I'll at least put
 in a pointer to this discussion in my bug report.

        manoj
-- 
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent
perspiration. Thomas Alva Edison
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>  
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