Re: Include leaf in Emacs distribution

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

Naoya Yamashita <conao3@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm author of leaf[1][2] which is one of ELPA package.  I propose
> to add the package in the default Emacs dictribution.
[...]
> Now, leaf wraps the idiom for configuring Emacs packages.  If
> you're using use-package[4], it's not hard to imagine.  The offering
> is pretty much the same but bit different.
>
> Why did I create leaf?  Because the syntax of the use-package was
> a bit confusing and there were copyright issues[5].

Thanks for your work.  FWIW, here are my two cents.

First, the copyright issues with use-package are being worked on, see:
https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package/issues/282

Once that is worked out, we could include both use-package and leaf in
Emacs, only one of them, or both.  It is good that we have two packages
here, since it gives us more options.

I have looked at the leaf package before, but I could never figure out
why I would want to use it instead of use-package.  They are very
similar, and the functionality seems to be mostly overlapping.  I think
that we should perhaps consider why we even have two packages here.
Could the functionality of one be absorbed by the other?  Are the
differences really that important?  But maybe I'm just missing
something.

Personally, I'd rather not see two very similar packages in Emacs unless
there are important differences and sufficiently strong reasons.

One starting point here is that use-package seems to be more widely used
and known.  If this is correct, I guess leaf unfortunately has a bit of
an uphill battle to show some significant improvement over use-package.