Re: [nongnu] main 74116339a8 2/3: * elpa-packages (anzu): New package

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Interesting idea, though it should probably be opt-in, at the risk of
> skewing the popularity data towards enthusiasts.  Just one thing: It
> seems like this would either require a special server or to scrub the
> server logs.  Is either of that feasible?

The webserver on elpa.gnu.org is under our control, so yes we have
access to the log.  I believe the same holds for MELPA.

As for "opt-in", I don't see any need to add user-control to it, but we
should rather show more complete data (like a histogram) so the users
can get a better sense of what's going on.

>> I also think we should have a "rating" system in place, which should
>> also somehow include information on which version/date the user rated
>> the package in.
> Would also be nice.

I don't know how to do that, OTOH (at least in a way that's not too
susceptible to ridiculous amounts of bias).

> If we have Evil, it seems necessary to add some of extensions, as Evil
> appears to not be complete on it's own.  But as this is an entire
> package-space onto itself, I am uncertain which of these are actually
> being used and which are obsoleted by either other evil-specific
> packages, other general packages or even features in Emacs.

There seems to be a fair bit of duplication here, in that many of those
Evil-specific packages would benefit from being made non-specific to
Evil (or merged with similar non-Evil-specific packages).

>> I'm not sure if we should have a public record of packages we decide
>> *not* to add.  If we did, one place to put it would be just directly
>> `nongnu/elpa-packages` itself, in the regular alphabetical order, which
>> is a place you're less likely to forget looking in.
> It might not be bad to collect these notes somewhere.

I agree with Stefan (the usurper) in that `elpa-packages` is a good
place for that.

> On the topic of critical mass:  It might be possible to spread NonGNU
> ELPA via compat (https://git.sr.ht/~pkal/compat), as soon as it is
> released.

I don't understand hat you meant by that.

Do you mean to have `compat` do

    (add-to-list 'package-archives '("nongnu" . ...))

?

> But as the package is already borderline heretical, I hesitate to do
> something like this (the same applies to updating the default rcirc
> and erc server lists).

Maybe we can make it safe enough via something like

    (when (member package-archives
                  '((("gnu" . "https://..."))
                    (("gnu" . "http://..."))))
      (add-to-list 'package-archives '("nongnu" . ...)))

so it only adds the entry when nothing's been changed yet.


        Stefan