Re: unsupported packages area in the Emacs repo

[Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@emacsmirror.org>]

This did not go to the list in the first try (only Tom). So again:

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 22:36, Tom Tromey <elpa@tromey.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Ted" == Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>
> Ted> I hope Tom Tromey and Jonas Bernoulli are interested in participating
> Ted> too, and that the Emacs maintainers are willing to give this a try.
> Ted> FWIW I will help any way I can and I think it would really improve the
> Ted> Emacs user experience to install unsupported packages easily.
>
> I am interested but I don't have time to work on it.

I am also interested and will have time to work on it starting sometime next
month.

> Recently, Phil Hagelberg <technomancy@gmail.com> has been looking into
> integrating package.el into Emacs.  I don't know how much progress he
> has made.

Phil has contacted my privately uttered the worry that I might be duplicating
efforts. As I have explained to him this is not my intention and I plan to work
with anyone who is interested in the general idea of "package managment"
for Emacs, which of course could be implemented in many different ways.

I have given this a lot of thought some of which are mentioned on the mirrors
homepage [1]. Phil indicated that he agrees with many of them at least in
spirit.

He also said that he has found a few like minded people on #elpa.

He also mentioned that the maintainers have agreed to (possibly) include
`package.el' in the 24 (I think [2] is the relevant thread). As this idea seams
to gain some momentum I think the best way to proceed from here is this:

A few dedicated people - Phil, me, hopefully Tom and others who have
shown support and interest in the past (and of course those that haven't in
the past but do now) - work together more closely to create a working
implementation. (see below, and elsewhere in this thread).

Then in time for the 24 release it has to be decided whether things are
ready and if not we should admit it and not include it. There is no need
to hurry and add anything prematurely.

> There are a couple problems to be solved in the Emacs source tree, and
> then a more sane server side must be written.  The latter may just be
> some version control system plus some post-commit hooks to regenerate
> the metadata.

I and Phil also think that the use of a _distributed_ version control system is
the way to go.

About the metadata: I have created `elx.el' [3] an extension to `lisp-mnt.el'
which has more features (can extract additional data) and can deal with library
header that don't fully comply with the header conventions (as well as aspects
that should be defined there but haven't).

I have written to this list before [4] about `elx.el' and Stefan has
agreed that some
of it should probably be merged into `lisp-mnt.el'.  I have since made
quite a few
extensions and others will follow this is why I did not prepare any patches for
`lisp-mnt.el' yet.

The current implementation is able to generate what I call "epkg" a sexp like
this:

(:summary    "Extract information from Emacs Lisp libraries"
 :created    "20081202"
 :updated    "20091208"
 :license    "GPL-3"
 :authors    (("Jonas Bernoulli" . "jonas@bernoul.li"))
 :maintainer ("Jonas Bernoulli" . "jonas@bernoul.li")
 :provided   (elx)
 :required   ((("dconv" dconv)
              ("emacs" cl lisp-mnt)
              ("vcomp" vcomp)))
 :keywords   ("libraries")
 :homepage   "https://github.com/tarsius/elx")

[Tom: I also have some patches for `package.el' and will send them to you
once I find the time to work on it. I would have contacted you some time in
January but since this discussion is talking place now: Hi! I hope we will
work together well!]

I will comment on some other suggestions at the appropriate places in this
thread. (In particular about my thought on how the repository(ies) should be
implemented, what additions to package.el are necessary, and some more
on the use of dvcs).

And you might also want to read [1] and the relevant pages on ELPA [5].

-- Jonas

[1] http://www.emacsmirror.org
[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/101927
[3] http://github.com/tarsius/elx
[4] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/117127
[5] http://tromey.com/elpa/