Re: Debian's idiosyncratic complexification of Emacs

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> I'm trying to picture where this might be useful.  Typically, an Emacs
> user on his home box is going to have exactly one version of (X)Emacs
> installed, so the complexity will be a burden.  An Emacs hacker, such
> as all of us, is going to have several, or even many, (X)Emacs
> versions hanging around, in his own custom built directory structure,
> and will probably have built these from source.

An Emacs package hacker will have to have several versions of Emacs as
well as XEmacs installed.  Although he will not really need them
integrated with the system.

On multi-user systems, different Emacsen might be prefered by different
people.

> I can't see Debian's complexity being useful for either of these
> (though I may be wrong).  A sysadmin administering a mutil-hacker
> development shop would surely find it useful.

Probably.  But it should still be sufficient to provide packages just
for a single version of Emacs, and to provide XEmacs packages completely
separately (Sumo alone calls for that).

-- 
David Kastrup