Re: What's Elpa? (I.e. what did you decide the name refers to?)

[phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Filipp Gunbin <fgunbin@fastmail.fm> writes:

> On 08/01/2015 06:27 +0000, Kelly Dean wrote:
>
>> In general usage, it now seems to mean a particular repository (the
>> one at elpa.gnu.org), with others being Melpa and Marmalade. Unless
>> this is another case of my limited reading comprehension abilities.
>
> What general usage do you mean?


I think he means that there is no work that means "an Emacs package
archive". So, for example, take the docstring of
package-refresh-packages...

Download the ELPA archive description if needed.
This informs Emacs about the latest versions of all packages, and
makes them available for download.


This is actually wrong because it can download several (although by
default it downloads only the elpa.gnu.org one). It could be corrected:

Download all ELPA archive descriptions.

But now we are using "ELPA" to mean "a generic emacs package archive".
So, we can't distinguish between elpa.gnu.org and marmalade.


For myself, I would just substitute "ELPA" with "package". So

Download all package archive descriptions.

The "Emacs-Lisp" and "Archive" from ELPA are sort of implicit I think.
Actually, the "Archive" is explicit!


Phil