Re: package and testing rant (was Re: package.el, auto-installation, and auto-removal)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

David Kastrup writes:

 > Git is not "for users".  It is for developers.

That, unfortunately, is a distinction that doesn't exist with git.  I
have many students with no detectable neural activity as far as
software development goes keeping their theses in a group-accessible
git repo.  That means I don't have to fish their content out of some
broken mail message, and it keeps a record of when they are actually
working on their documents.  (If I could only get them to use Emacsen
and TeX so git diff would be useful!  But that's another story.)  Some
of them have actually discovered that the log is useful to them too!

True, from the developer's POV, git is not a great way to distribute
products-with-source because it doesn't keep Make relationships up to
date.  However, that doesn't mean it doesn't make a good way to
distribute product to users.

Perhaps this tension could be addressed by having a "developer" branch
(which could be trunk = "master", of course) which assumes a complete
suite of tools for developers, and a "distribute" branch containing
products that require tools other than Emacs itself for users.
Thinking out loud, using the current "maintenance" branch as a
"distribute" branch might even work.  With appropriate tools (to be
written AFAIK, unfortunately), you can recover (to a close
approximation) the necessary timestamp information to avoid
unnecessary rebuilding by Make, too.

And of course you could resolve the tension by declaring Emacs's
and/or ELPA's git repos to be developer-only.  I'm pointing out
possibilities, not imperatives.