Re: user-controlled load-path extension: load-dir

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

Dimitri> What el-get currently does not do is editing any user's file.  What's
Dimitri> proposed in this thread is a way for el-get to bootstrap itself in a
Dimitri> user's setup without having to edit the user's init file.

Yes, my proposal accomplishes that.  There are two problems here.

The first problem is, how does the user ever get el-get.el?
Do they download it from a web site?  Do you have some installer elisp
on a web site to eval (this is what I did with ELPA)?  Etc.

Whatever the answer is to that problem, there is a similar
package.el-based answer.

E.g., if you have some elisp on your web site to download and install
el-get.el, just write different elisp (untested):

(let ((buffer (url-retrieve-synchronously "the url/el-get.el")))
  (with-current-buffer buffer
    ;; strip the headers
    (re-search-forward "^$" nil 'move)
    (forward-char)
    (delete-region (point-min) (point))
    (package-install-from-buffer (package-buffer-info) 'single))
  (kill-buffer buffer))

If users just download your file by hand, then they just do that and
then M-x package-install-file.


The second problem is, how does el-get.el get activated?

If el-get.el is an ordinary package, in the package.el sense, then in
Emacs 24 it will just work with zero changes to the user's init file.
Autoloads will be extracted, etc.  You can make it do any
el-get-specific activation quite easily using an autoload comment.

Tom