Installation, activation and setup of packages (e.g. Gnus) (was: Integrating package.el)

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Tue, Jan 05 2010, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

> On Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:51:06 -0700 Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> wrote: 
> Ted> A better setup process for Gnus would be really nice, though.

ACK

> Ted> The usual pre-install and post-install scripts you find in RPM
> Ted> or DEB would help.

Those don't start per-user setup.  The (missing) setup process (using
Gnus half-done assistant.el or anything else) is per-user: configuring
news server, mail sources, IMAP, SMTP.

> Ted> I suspect many other packages would benefit from a better setup
> Ted> process through package.el.
>
> Tom> If you want to try packaging it, I can explain what you need to do.
> Tom> It is usually quite easy.
>
> I think the pre-install and post-install steps are pretty important.
> Without them, packaging Gnus doesn't do much.  I want the post-install
> to actually set up the user's Gnus configuration.  This has been a very
> common complaint about Gnus.  

I don't think the purpose of package.el is to do or start the user
setup.  The Gnus assistant is supposed to be run when a *user* fires
up Gnus for the first time, which is after the package is already
installed and "activated" (by the *administrator*).  I would oppose to
mix admistrative tasks (installation) with user setup.

> Installing it is the easy part, since it comes with Emacs.  Can
> package.el support that?  I can't tell if this is the "activate" or
> the "load" stage (are they states or state transitions?  English can
> be so ambiguous...) or something new; also it seems like this is
> something external to Gnus, a function of the ELPA wrapper (although
> it may be bundled within Gnus) rather than something Gnus will
> always run for new users.  This is the major question I have before
> I propose this packaging on the Gnus mailing list.

Bye, Reiner.
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