Thierry Volpiatto <thievol@posteo.net> writes:

> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> Thierry Volpiatto <thievol@posteo.net> writes:
>>
>>> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>>>
>>>>> No don't worry, helm will work in any cases, thanks.
>>>>
>>>> OK, in that case I'd prefer to keep it the way it is.
>>>
>>> Ok, fair enough.
>>>
>>>>>> Mainly to avoid issues with packages that might place files in the
>>>>>> configuration directory, which might hinder the reproduction of bugs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, maybe, I don't have an example in mind though.
>>>>
>>>> It might not be the best example, but my package autocrypt generates a
>>>> file in the `user-emacs-directory'.  If we don't use --init-directory,
>>>> the existing file would be re-used.
>>>
>>> Ok, for such case it is easy to either rename the file temporarily to
>>> foo_ori or foo_save or to set the variable handling the file (generally
>>> it is not harcoded) to something else. But another issue is if your
>>> isolated package needs the history file or tramp file or whatever file
>>> ~/.emacs.d is handling; e.g. a package providing completion on history.
>>> I still think it is more handy to reuse user-emacs-directory and its
>>> elpa directory where the packages are already installed.
>>
>> How about this patch, that will use a temporary directory when
>> `package-isolate' is invoked with a prefix argument (not sure what the
>> default should be, I guess reusing `user-emacs-directory' is less
>> surprising):
>
> However it is not working properly:
>
> Tried to isolate two packages, osm and w3m, and osm use compat as
> dependency:
>
> Unable to activate package ‘osm’.
> Required package ‘compat-29.1.4.0’ is unavailable

Forget it, it is working properly, just forget you had modified
package--dependencies as well.
Sorry for the noise.

-- 
Thierry