Re: Adding Emms to ELPA (take 2), and a technical question

[Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>]

>>>>> On Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:22:55 -0400, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> said:

    Richard> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
    Richard> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
    Richard> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

    >> Iʼd take a look at 'pdf-tools', it both compiles C-code and installs
    >> necessary packages using 'apt-get' and similar.

    Richard> That is an undesirable practice: it turns package installation into
    Richard> something users won't keep track of.

If you want to use pdf-tools, and decide not to let it install the
required packages for you, you have to install them on its behalf. I
donʼt see the practical difference. The documentation of pdf-tools is
very clear about how to do the installation by hand.

    Richard> (Secondary practical issue: to succeed in running apt-get it would
    Richard> have to run as root, I think.)

It uses 'sudo', and is very clear about that too. Of course if youʼre
installing by hand you can install packages as non-root and play games
with PKG_CONFIG_PATH to get pdf-tools to find them.

(this is where someone points out a GNU/Linux package management
system where *everything* is installed as non-root :-) )

Robert