Re: CVS is the `released version'

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

>>>>> "RMS" == Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>>     Tom Tromey posted a simple implementation of a package system to
>>     emacs.sources recently. It works fairly well, so the time is already
>>     invested.

RMS> I wish that were true, but most of the work of installing a package
RMS> system is making everything _use_ it.

Actually this package manager was designed with the goal of making it
very easy to support.  If package.el were included in Emacs it would
require listing some version information for packages included in
Emacs, and invoking (package-initialize) during startup.  So I think
this could be supported without much difficulty in Emacs itself.

>>     Compared with systems like Eclipse, installing an emacs package
>>     consists of some fairly boring obviously automatable steps. (like
>>     hunting for the package,

RMS> I don't see how any code installed in Emacs could save you the need
RMS> for that.

package.el is attached to a web site, ELPA, where package updates are
uploaded.  The idea here is twofold.  First, many packages are
released between Emacs releases; package.el makes it simple to update
to these releases and use them.  Second, not every useful Emacs Lisp
package out there is going to be included in Emacs.  We've seen over
the years that having a separate repository is in fact very useful to
Emacs users.

Another thing package.el provides is simple installation.  Packages
are downloaded (including their dependencies, if any) and installed
for you, autoloads are extracted, the package is byte-compiled, and
when Emacs starts up,the packages are "activated" (meaning the
autoloads are evalled).  Users don't have to modify their .emacs for
updates to load-path, the Info path, or a list of autoloads.

There aren't many packages in ELPA yet.  However my experience has
been that packages consisting of a single .el file (the most common
kind) are very easy to fix up for inclusion.  That's because
package.el can usually extract the information it needs for files
following the already existing Emacs commenting guidelines.

Currently ELPA is hosted on my web site but I plan to turn it into a
project on savannah or the like.

Tom