Re: ELPA and EmacsWiki Updates

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

>>>>> "Ted" == Edward O'Connor <hober0@gmail.com> writes:

>> Smaller (single file) packages tend to require some comment fixes
>> first[...]

Ted> What sort of fixes? Could ELPA be enhanced to require fewer changes, or
Ted> no changes at all, for the common case?

Usually it is just header comments.  In particular package.el needs 2
things:

* The header and trailer comments have to be correct according to the
  Emacs commenting guidelines.  The header comment holds the package's
  name and also a comment describing the package; also the header and
  trailer are used by package-upload-file to find the boundaries of
  the file.

* package.el needs a "Version:" header comment whose value is a
  "dotted numeric" version number.  package.el uses this to handle
  upgrading packages, only activating a single version, etc.
  (There are other header comments that package.el can use, but this
  is the only required one.)

I suppose we could dispense with these somehow, at the cost of reduced
functionality.  It does make it simpler for uploading if a file has
these -- I don't have to enter anything by hand.  And versioning, I
think, is good for users.

I also like to make sure that a file has proper ;;;###autoload
comments.  I think it is important that packages come ready for action
-- a big part of the goal of ELPA is to make it simple for users to
install and use Emacs packages.

Tom