Re: Installing binaries with package.el

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2017 17:58:10 +0100 Aurélien Aptel <aurelien.aptel+emacs@gmail.com> wrote: 

AA> Having a support for modules in packages would be cool indeed. But
AA> building binaries that work across linux distro is going to be very
AA> painful especially since the modules is very likely going to be linked
AA> against others libs. So an ELPA like system for pre-built modules is
AA> probably not a good idea...

I was thinking of a standard OS package repository, e.g. Yum or APT, and
a link to that from the ELPA package.

Rgeardless, maybe an ELPA package should be able to declare its
dependency on specific OS packages. This could be useful even if the
package doesn't have binaries or modules.

AA> I think it's best to stick to compiling them on the user machine.
AA> Which is also tricky to get right obviously.

On Tue, 07 Feb 2017 12:45:54 -0500 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 

SM> Notice that ELPA packages have always shipped in source form (even the
SM> .el files are byte-compiled on the user's machine).  So it's only
SM> natural to expect dynloaded modules distributed via ELPA to be
SM> distributed in source form and compiled during installation.

Help me understand. Say user installs module FOO-1 which binds to
library BAR-1. User upgrades BAR-1 to BAR-2 or uninstalls BAR-1. What
happens?

What happens to users that don't have a compiler? Do you think OS
distributions will pick up the module distribution piece like they did
with Python, Perl, etc.?

Ted