Re: Installing binaries with package.el

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2017 08:12:21 -0500 Clément Pit-Claudel <cpitclaudel@gmail.com> wrote: 

CP> My case is a bit different. The binary is just a bash wrapper around an Emacs
CP> Lisp program, so I don't have compilation-related issues; I do, however, want my
CP> users to be able to call the program easily, which probably means that I want to
CP> create binaries outside of my package's installation folder (which in turns has
CP> consequences on uninstallation behaviour: deleting the installation folder isn't
CP> enough).

There's a similar concern about installing Emacs modules from
ELPA--they have to be compiled and installed at some point.

I think the best option may be to split binaries off to a new repo:

1) add support for binary package dependencies to ELPA packages. This
would be something like a cond based on arch + OS, and would only look
at GNU ELPA binary packages.

2) set up a GNU ELPA autobuilt binaries repository to support (1) for
modules and binaries that are only meaningful in an Emacs context.

The alternatives I see are to a) support binaries *inside* the GNU ELPA,
which was not designed for it, or b) support binaries inside ELPA
packages, which were not designed for that either. Maybe there are others?

Ted