Re: Option to not automatically customize-save-variable `package-selected-packages'

[John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>]

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>>>>> Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm> writes:

> And what has now been decided (if anything)? Will there be an option to keep
> package.el from writing `package-selected-packages' to
> `custom-set-variables'? And what will happen if I set this option? Do I
> *have* to setq `package-selected-packages' or can I also leave it nil?
> Should I expect any adverse effects if I do that (other than the fact that
> packages won't be installed automatically, of course). Since I use
> use-package anyway, I'd prefer it if I could just leave
> `package-selected-packages' unset.

The customization interface, like code written in a .emacs file, represents
manual changes initiated by the user. These should go into a file they keep
under version control, as a record of how they have personalized their Emacs
environment.

Changes beyond that, such as `package-selected-packages', that are not
configured by the user directly, but are changed and persisted by code running
in Emacs, should be saved to the user-data-directory in a file specific to
that package. The ideal for doing this would be a new persistence API that
packages can rely on to do the right thing whenever needed.

The general principle is that, if you keep a file under version control, it
should change only when you know you've made changes affecting that file.
Generated data outside of Customize should not make changes to that file.

One might say that selecting packages represents a flavor of customization,
and I'd be open to hearing that argument; but enough people have expressed
surprise and dislike about this that I feel the data should be persisted in a
location dedicated to that purpose.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

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