Re: Easy configuration of a site-lisp directory

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2021 at 21:01, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > I have an unconfirmed guess that some people want not only to see the
> > code but also hack it. In this use case, it is desirable for M-. to
> > take them to the actual hackable code so that any changes persist
> > across Emacs restarts and are seen by version control.
>
> But the .el.gz files that Emacs displays _are_ "hackable", in the
> sense that you can modify it and then save the results.  Right?

Right… technically.

0. I[*] have an itch and go to scratch it. M-. takes me to an .el.gz
somewhere in /usr/share/emacs.
1. I want to start hacking but the buffer is read-only because (x): my
regular user does not have write access to system-wide
platform-independent files.
1a. I can switch to the hackable /home/me/src/emacs/lisp/{filename}.el
right away while lamenting that M-. did not take me right there, or
1b. I can press C-x C-q to remove the readonlyness. For the sake of
argument, let’s see where this leads.
2. I make a change and want to save it. I cannot because (x).
2a. Again, at this point, I can C-x C-w
/home/you/src/emacs/lisp/{filename}.el, cursing under my breath.
Alternatively,
2b. Since I have admin rights, I can take ownership or loosen access
rights on the file so I can save it. Again, let’s say I do this just
to prove a point.
3. I finish my work and want to do a self-review before committing.
But /usr/share/emacs is not under version control and I did not make a
backup and now I still have to go to my git clone.

[*]: for a suitable value of “I”. If I frequently wanted to make
changes to Emacs proper, that would be my reasoning. As it is, I
merely project it onto people who do.