Re: understanding emacs packages

[knubee <knubee@gmail.com>]

> "manual inspection" is spelled "M-x dired
> RET /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp RET C-s planner" to find planner.el.

:-)

> On my machine, if they are part of the Emacs distribution (e.g.,
> Gnus), then they are in the directory corresponding to the version
> number (23 in my case).  If they are not, then they are in site-lisp.

Ok. I was just wondering if there was a more general mechanism for
identifying a) the list of all emacs packages installed, and b)
"where" they are (i.e., part of the distribution or personal install
in site-lisp).

By analogy, if I install applications with a gnu/linux package
installer such as aptitude, I can use that package manager to see all
the packages installed (by that package manager). This breaks down, of
course, if I use another package manager to install some of them (or
download and install .deb files without using a package manager).

In that scenario, the emacs distribution is somewhat analogous to the
package manager in terms of installing things (especially if we
install/update it from cvs). I was just wondering if emacs provided
something analogous to the "list all installed emacs packages."

I realize this is non-trivial for a lot of different reasons, but it
would be nice if it was possible to get a list of the intersection of
a) the list the packages which have been accepted into the
distribution , and b) those which are still present in our
installation of that distribution (ie, in the distribution's canonic
locations).

> I'm not aware of anything
> system wide that would affect the installation of Emacs packages.  But
> then again, I stopped using package managers a while ago.  There may
> very well be something in Ubuntu that puts the packages somewhere else.

No, it seems to install them in the right places. There are just some
minor issues with the behavior of a couple of emacs applications when
I boot into the new version of the OS. They do not throw actual
errors, so I am just trying to narrow down the possible sources.

thanks.