Re: Preferred approach to inclusion of data in ELPA package

[Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev>]

On 17/08/2023 16:58, Hugo Thunnissen wrote:
> 1. Distribute the stubs with the package and parse them each time **when 
> the package is loaded**.
> 
> 2. Parse and index the stubs, then serialize the resulting index into a 
> gzipped lisp data file that is checked into version control, and is 
> loaded **when the package is loaded**. (BTW, should such a .eld file be 
> byte compiled for any reason?)
> 
> 3. Parse and index the stubs, then serialize the resulting index 
> **during compile time**. Either by generating lisp code using a macro, 
> or by serializing the index into a .eld file. This guarantees the index 
> staying up to date with the contents of the stub files whenever the 
> package is compiled.

How about parsing them lazily? When the package is loaded and the 
processed info isn't there, you parse the stubs and save the result to a 
file. Next time you see it exists and read/load it.

This can come with some "staleness" mechanics (do the stubs require 
frequent updates?), as well as the user's ability to delete them anyway 
and force to be generated anew.

Offhand, I don't see any downsides for this behavior: the installation 
we be faster by avoiding this step, the delay when the generation 
happens will be localized to the user's loading the mode (so they will 
be able to guess the reason easily), and it's not like generation during 
byte-compilation would proceed any faster?