Re: Preferred approach to inclusion of data in ELPA package

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Hugo Thunnissen <devel@hugot.nl> writes:

> On 8/17/23 23:14, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
>>
>> Another idea is to have a Makefile generate the file, like the one you
>> describe in option 2., that is generate whenever the package is built
>> and bundled into a tarball for distribution.  That way you don't have to
>> store a binary blob in your repository, and you can avoid burdening the
>> user with additional computations at either compile or runtime.
>>
>> Does the generation require any special functionality/tools/code to be
>> provided on the device the index is generated on?
>
> The php function/class stubs are generated with a php script, but I'm
> checking the resulting stubs file into git. The index itself can be
> built with just my package based on the stubs file.

I saw that, and the commit did not look that nice, but I cannot say that
I have looked into the issue in sufficient detail to say with certainty
or not that there is no better solution.

> Some more context, as I built and bench-marked a prototype: The
> resulting index file is 3.1MB of s-expressions  which when compressed
> with gzip becomes a file of 172K (there's a lot of duplicate
> symbols/strings in there). Loading this file takes about 30% less time
> than building the index from scratch (300ms vs 430-450ms on my laptop
> with Core i5-8250U, byte compiled). I suppose this could be further
> optimized with a more efficient serialization format, but I don't want
> to spend much time on implementing that as I'm working towards an
> initial package release.
>
> How would having a Makefile like you suggest work in practice? Would I
> need to request that the ELPA maintainers add my Makefile to the build
> process of my package somehow? Or is there a standard automated way to
> have Makefiles be executed during an ELPA build?

An ELPA package specification can include :make and :shell-command
queries, that are executed on the ELPA build server, with restricted
permissions.  If you take a look at
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/elpa.git/tree/elpa-packages and
their respective repositories, you will find a few examples.

> Also: If the former is the case, is the reduction in load time that
> this brings even significant enough to be worth the bother or should I
> just hold off on this while I look for a more efficient solution?

I'd say it would be worth it, if the resulting package would be smaller
and would load quicker.  After all, the performance on your laptop might
not be that significant of a difference, while for someone else with an
older or slower device, a 30%-speedup is pretty significant.