Re: Suppressing native compilation (short and long term)

[Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> That still doesn't explain it to me (I don't use Debian).  Can you
> elaborate what kind of packages are we talking about, in the context
> of this discussion?

One possible way to look at it -- on a Debian system I think you'd
generally

  apt install emacs  # (or gcc-12 or ...)

if you just wanted to use emacs or gcc, or...  And that would install
the binaries, more or less, i.e. roughly like "make install", but with
automatic dependency resolution, etc.

And note that with many tools that would get you *just* the binaries,
i.e. no source at all for say gcc, libc, grep, git, etc.

If you wanted to investigate, fix, enhance the packaging itself, then
you might

  apt source emacs

which would download the packaging and unpack it in the current
directory, as say emacs-28.1+1-3/, and where all the packaging
related-changes, including any patches applied to the upstream code,
would be clearly visible in a emacs-28.1+1-3/debian/ subdirectory in the
emacs source.

For many packages these days you might also be able to just clone the
Debian packaging archive, e.g.

  git clone https://salsa.debian.org/rlb/deb-emacs.git

which might be preferable if you're more comfortable with git.

And finally, if your primary interest is the upstream source, and/or
running and/or working on anything other than the versions debian
currently provides, I suspect you'd likely want to

  git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git

i.e. you wouldn't need and might well not want the debian packag(ing|es)
at all.

Hope this helps.
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
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