Re: GNU ELPA package discoverability

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

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On Mon, 25 May 2020 at 00:38, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> > Date: Sun, 24 May 2020 19:15:46 +1000
> > Cc: Emacs developers <Emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> >
> >  Define guidelines to help developers decide where is the best location
> for their library, module, extension
> > etc. After reading these guidelines, a developer should be confident
> they now know what is the appropriate
> > location for their code.
> >
> > I think this is a common question developers would ask themselves.
>
> Aren't these questions answered in ELPA's README?
>

No it doesn't. It does answer some of them, but not others (and is probably
not
the right place to answer some of them).

The ELPA README is certainly a start with respect to basic workflow.
Information
which it lacks that a new developer may want to know or which needs
clarification includes

- Who can get push permission to the ELPA git repository?
- How do you request push permission?
- The README is a little weak on process when you don't have push permission
- The instructions re: email to emacs-devel for package developers who do
not
  have push permission does not indicate how to provide the package
  sources/updates. It says that someone will push it for you, but if you
  don't have push permission to the git repo, how do you get your code in
there
  to begin with?

The README does provide reasonable details for someone who has push rights
to
the ELPA repository. However, there is a lack of detail for anyone who does
ot
have push rights and nothing about who can get push rights or the process to
obtain them. (there is also a problem of scale and security with this
model).

The README does state you can add an external repository, which is probably
one
model that could scale better than providing developers with push rights. I
was
quite surprised to see this given all the debate surrounding pull requests
given
that the same basic technique is how pull requests work. I was even more
surprised to see around 80 of these external packages are hosted on github
given
all the discussions about github being evil. Around 30% of the packages in
ELPA
list github as their homepage with the URL: tag.Response to Eli re ELPA
README

Questions about what can/should go into ELPA, what should be included in
Emacs
core and what cannot go into ELPA are not addressed at all (the README is
probably not the right place for this information)
-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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