Re: BBDB v3 approaching release

["Roland Winkler" <winkler@gnu.org>]

On Wed May 29 2013 Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > How do I configure install locations of a package if it's in ELPA
> > format?
> 
> You don't.
> 
> > Especially, if the package has non-lisp components?
> 
> You leave them alongside the Elisp files.  And when you need them, your
> Elisp package will find them by looking around itself (it can get
> access to its own location via `load-file-name').

BBDB contains three TeX files that are required by plain TeX when
you want to print the database.  Here BBDB creates a TeX file that
contains for example

  \input bbdb-print
  \input bbdb-cols

In a texmf installation, these files would go into a directory like
/usr/local/share/texmf/bbdb 
I do not know where other TeX installations expect to find such files.

Can the ELPA format handle such files, too?  How?

In a way, I am surprised that I do not know about other elisp
packages having similar needs. Whenever you want to print something
with (La)TeX, you normally need some kind of style file that (La)TeX
needs to find.

Of course, one work around would be that emacs includes the style
file into the TeX files it generates. One advantage of such an
approach would be that the resulting TeX files become self-contained
for any "standard" TeX installation so that one can forward the TeX
files to someone who does not have the BBDB tex files installed.
But I consider the forwarding of such files a more rare scenario.

Roland