Re: Adding the `prescient` packages to NonGNU ELPA?

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Stefan Kangas [2022-11-20 03:23:09] wrote:
>> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>>>> All of these packages live in the same repository in the link below.
>>>
>>> Would it be possible to change this?  E.g. by making each project live
>>> on it's own branch.  That would make the :ignored-files rules below a
>>> lot simpler.
>>
>> We could also make the rules simpler by adding support for the inverse
>> of :ignored-packages.
>
> Multi-package repositories are fundamentally incompatible with
> `package-vc` (they kind of work, but with various caveats).

They will have the same issues as elpa-admin has, right?  In that case,
the issue will be if someone just wants to install prescient, they will
have all the other dependencies unconditionally "installed" along with
the rest.  At the same time, if someone installs one of the more
specialised packages, which adds the same repository as a dependency,
you'll have the same package checked out twice, and I would have to
guess which takes priority in `load-path'...

> So I think we definitely don't want to support them better, but instead
> we should discourage them.  If we want to invest efforts in that
> direction it should be efforts to make it easier to "re-merge" packages
> so as to move away from the problem.

Agreed.