Re: Interoperation between package managers (was: Friendly discussion about (package-initialize))

[Radon Rosborough <radon.neon@gmail.com>]

> > > Part of "make them interoperate" may involve changing the formats
> > > accepted&|used by the various tools, indeed (on-disk,
> > > on-the-server, ...).
> >
> > Note that source-based package managers such as Borg and straight.el
> > are fundamentally incompatible with the package.el format (or,
> > depending on your perspective, the package.el format is
> > fundamentally incompatible with source-based package managers such
> > as Borg and straight.el).
>
> Hmm... really?  Could you expand on why that is?

Perhaps I should not have said the package.el format is fundamentally
incompatible with source-based package managers. What I should have
said is that source-based package managers would gain little by being
compatible with the package.el format. This is because the package.el
format is inherently unable to provide for the basic features that
define a source-based package manager.

In particular, packages that are installed via package.el cannot be
version-controlled, since the package.el format dictates a flat
collection of *.el (and other) files, with no version-control
information attached other than a version number. As a corollary, it
is impossible to use the package.el format to make local modifications
to a package in a controlled way, or to contribute changes upstream
using package.el.

All of these actions (version-control operations, local changes,
upstream contributions) are foundational to a source-based package
manager. The only way to achieve them is to run packages directly from
their VCS repositories (Borg, see [1]) or via symlinks that point at
said repositories (straight.el, see [2]). Thus, from a purely
technical standpoint, it is not useful for a source-based package
manager to interoperate with package.el in any meaningful way.

I do not wish to say that package.el is flawed for failing to provide
these features, since package.el is designed to work in the absence of
a local VCS installed, and it is impossible to provide these features
without making that assumption. But for package managers which do make
that assumption, the package.el format (in my opinion) is no longer as
relevant.

Best,
Radon

[1]: https://github.com/emacscollective/borg
[2]: https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el