Re: Easy configuration of a site-lisp directory

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>>
>>> Just wanted to ping this message to check if there is any interest in
>>> doing something with my initial suggestion?
>>
>> I do something similar as you do, but I use it only for some loose
>> files I write myself, and for some I download from emacs wiki etc.
>>
>>>> The fundamental idea is to have an easy-to-use ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/
>>>> directory where a user can clone any repository or create their own,
>>>> without having to manually add these to load-path, generate autoloads or
>>>> byte compile.
>>
>> I have a question: is it desirable to use a working git directory as
>> installed package? When I write my own files, I usually don't wish to
>> copy them over to my "lisp" directory which I autoload in Emacs, untill
>> I am done. Admittedly I started doing so before git has entered the
>> scene. Now I guess one can switch branches every time one works on a package
>> between some development branch and some stable, but isn't it a bit tedious?
>
> Usually I don't store them in my site-lisp directory, but just symlink
> what I want to use from my source code directory. If something isn't
> functional or ready, there shouldn't be any reason I would want it
> byte-compiled, autoloaded and ready to use by default.

That is what I thought, and that means you are in the same situation as
without auto importing some "site-lisp" dir when it comes to xref & co? 

So what you proposed comes mostly in play when there is bunch of code installed
manually outisde of package.el. If there was only few files, I don't think it
would be intresseting to automate it either, so I guess there is more than few
files, probably a bunch of git cloned repos.

I think that something like what you propose is OK for you who are developer and
know what you do. But if you put something like this on auto in Emacs, I think
that lots of people with get troubles which can lead to even more frequent mailing
list :).

> If there is some critical change or something that isn't ready yet, I'd
> just use "git stash".
>
>> What you are suggesting is to effectively use "site-lisp" as another
>> package-user-dir (~/.emacs.d/elpa on my machine). You are also auto
>> recursing in all dirs, so if user wish to remove something they have to
>> remove that directory from the path?
>
> Yes, but I hesitate to compare it to package-user-dir, as to me packages
> stand in relation to some package manager, while site-lisp.el only
> implements the bare minimum.

Exactly. I am not sure if it is even the bare miniumum. 

Bringing in paths and code in Emacs, is just but one part of package
management. Installling dependencies and also uninstalling everything correctly,
not leaving orphaned pacakges behind or removing something still needed is as
important as well. For that reason I think that going through package.el would
be a better idea.

Everyone's setup is of course private, but I don't think that is a 
good idea and good alternative to proper package management. For the same reason
why we don't install packages manually in our gnu/linux distributions but use
some sort of package management system. Doing manually ./configure - make dance
is nowdays considered a bad practice.

Anyway, I understand your attempt, and I responded, because I was lately
looking for myself what to do, becuase I also would prefer to have easy hackable
packages, with same consideration as you said, to have emacs help system and
xref bring me to correct spot. I am not sure myself what I am gonna use.