Re: Recursion problems with package management

[Ian Zimmerman <itz@buug.org>]

On 2015-08-14 19:30 -0700, Rusi wrote:

> tl;dr
> Emacs package-managing emacs is thhe usual lure of Turing complete language can 
> do anything does not mean doing it is appropriate.
> 
> If we must use elisp for it, it would be good to have a separate
> 'binding-time'. Just as in the C world compile time and runtime are
> rigorously separated, it would be neat IMHO if elisp running in
> package-mgmt mode did it in batch-mode and required restart of emacs.
> 
> Perhaps req-package is in the earlier binding time
> And use-package the later one?

**WARNING** **WARNING** **WARNING**
Major snark mode on!

The answer is obvious: let distros do what they're supposed to do,
which is, um, packaging.  Doh!

Debian, for instance, already has the /etc/emacs/site-start.d directory
to do load ordering.  Now, there are three things I hear you screaming
right now:

1. The mechanism is hardly used right now, with everthing loading at the
same level (50).  That's just an opportunity to do much better!

2. The mechanism is pathetically weak, with all the problems of SysV
init on which it seems to be based.  Again, so replace it - but with
another (better) OS level thing, not with an Emacs thing.

3. Clearly we don't want maintainers to do separate packaging work for
each distro.  So, this is something that needs to be standardized among
the distros.  They _are_ willing to do that, when there's compelling
technical case for it.

In fact, I'm sending links to these threads to Rob Browning (Debian
Emacs maintainer) right now.

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