Re: Installing binaries with package.el

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> You mean "if we assume that dynload modules will be installed via apt/yum
> rather than via package.el"?
>
> Indeed, I expect that this will end up being fairly common (since even
> if you already have a C compiler installed, it's likely you'll need to
> have to install some libfoo-dev package to get the module to compile).

On the other hand, I'm happy to maintain a Gnu ELPA package, but I quit
being a Debian maintainer years ago, and I never was a maintainer for
other OS distros.

So if my ELPA package gets a dynload module (as is very likely), I will
only be distributing source. And it will work on Linux and Windows
without source change (hint; it won't be in C).

It's not likely that some Debian maintainer will magically appear for
some ELPA package. Popular ELPA packages might get Debian maintainers,
but not small ones. Although I suppose the Debian Emacs maintainer might
step up.

That just increases the pressure on the dynload module developer to
minimize the OS dependence, which is appropriate for a cross-OS tool
like Emacs.

> But I think that the case of non-developers installing via package.el
> should be considered important as well.  We probably won't be able to
> provide as smooth a solution for them as `apt-get` or `yum`, but they
> deserve some efforts on our part.

Right.

If package.el can run a shell script, that will succeed in a typical
case, that's good enough. The package user manual can explain the
dependencies, if any.

-- 
-- Stephe