Re: package-vc support for :files keyword

[Tony Zorman <tonyzorman@mailbox.org>]

On Tue, Sep 19 2023 08:47, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
> Tony Zorman <tonyzorman@mailbox.org> writes:
>
> [… 42 lines elided …]
>
>> This is not just for multiple packages in a single repository—at least
>> one has to somewhat broaden what "multiple packages" means. Some
>> packages include small shims for bigger projects, and inadvertently
>> require them as dependencies. The original issue[1] on the
>> vc-use-package repo mentions org-ql[2], more specifically its helm
>> integration in the form of helm-org-ql.el. Some people might not want to
>> pull down helm as a dependency just for one file that they are not going
>> to use anyways.
>>
>> I'm not sure how common of a situation this actually is, but at least
>> for the big completion frameworks—helm and ivy—it's not totally unheard
>> of.
>
> Hmm, this is interesting example that I was not familiar with.  As an
> alternative idea, do you think that using `:ignored-files' like
> elpa-admin.el could be useful?  You could exclude all the files with
> "soft-dependencies", that wouldn't be scraped in `package-vc--unpack-1'
> when looking for dependency files.

Overall, I think this would be the better (even best) approach, yes.

(I also consider executing external shell commands during build-time an
anti pattern, I just got the feeling that making package-vc support
`:ignored-files' wasn't on the table—glad to realise that I was wrong!)

-- 
Tony Zorman | https://tony-zorman.com/