Re: Unboxed package manager

[Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@gmail.com>]

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On Fri, Mar 24, 2023, 1:55 PM chad <yandros@gmail.com> wrote:

> I fear that this discussion might have veered too far into
> theoretical territory for some of the conversants, and probably not the
> _same_ theoretical territory for everyone. With that in mind, I *think*
> that what Lynn Winebarger is asking for might be best answered by:
>
> Try digging into the package-quickstart part of package, especially
>> p-q-refresh and p-q-maybe-refresh.
>
>
I'm already well into writing the first draft of the code.  I'm writing it
so packages will get saved down as they are now, but will not be in the
"selected-packages" list used to construct the quickstart file.  Preferably
I will be able to circumvent the compilation step (of the "boxed"
libraries) as well.

I've had to write a little function for cleanly replacing text
corresponding to a sexpr according to a pcase matcher.  I'd prefer to use a
pre-existing implementation, but I'm not aware of one.  It might be handy
in emacs-lisp-mode.  The tree-sitter variant of emacs-lisp-mode might
already provide a similar facility for replacing text based on a syntactic
pattern.


> On the other hand, I think that the best answer to "should emacs-devel
> actually care about loading scads of packages" might be:
>
> There seem to be a lot of (potential) emacs users, especially in the
>> "interested but not already heavily enfranchised subset", that make use of
>> emacs "distributions", and that model would probably benefit from
>> improvements to "loading scads of packages".
>
>
That's a fair and concise summary.   When I preload the world, M-x
customize is very usable for configuration purposes.  I have a hard time
seeing many casual new users accustomed to GUI configuration spending time
writing extensive elisp init files just to try packages to get UI features
they're accustomed to from other editors.

>
> This doesn't answer the "should" question, but I think it provides a
> closer-to-real-practice basis for consideration.
>
> Hope that helps,
> ~Chad
>

I think so - thanks!

Lynn

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