Re: Packages + elpa.gnu.org

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com> writes:

> 1. Who acts as a janitor for the elpa repository.

Me.  Ted Zlatanov also has access.  We've both been pretty busy on other
parts of Emacs lately, though, so there are a couple of packages that
are in the pipeline for uploading (including AuCTEX).

> 2. How does one upload packages - a mail drop to the maintainer, remote
>    update from within emacs - scp, ftp etc etc . (Is package-x.el's
>    package-upload-buffer and related configuration documented
>    somewhere.)

Probably the easiest way to set this up is for someone on the org-mode
team to upload the dailies to a server somewhere on the web, giving the
tarball a deterministic name.  Then, someone (probably me) will have to
set up a cron job on elpa.gnu.org to check for that tarball each day,
download it, and run `package-upload-file' to add it to the repository.

> 3. Does the package manager expect that builtin packages be versioned in
>    a special way. For example, can the stable release be called 7.0.1
>    while a daily snapshot be called 20101008?

The package manager uses the most recent version of a package, as
defined by `version-list-<'.

> 4. Any general guidelines on what packages would be accepted there and
>    how often an update can happen. Are daily snapshots allowed.

The main requirement is for package copyrights to be FSF assigned.  I
think providing dailies is fine.