Re: Adding advisory notification for non-ELPA package.el downloads

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

On Sat, Jul 08 2017, Clément Pit-Claudel wrote:
> On 2017-07-07 21:59, John Wiegley wrote:
>> I have a feeling that a lot of package authors choose MELPA 
>> because 
>> the barrier to entry is so low,  and they may not realize how 
>> easy it
>> is to get it into Emacs as well.
>
> It's not that they doesn't realize how easy it is: it's that 
> it's not easy.
>
> Getting into MELPA requires a writing a one-line Lisp form and 
> submitting it for inclusion.  Getting into ELPA requires subtle 
> git invocations that end up mashing up the history of your 
> project with that of tens of others, while fearing to break the 
> entire ELPA repo because of a missing copyright line in a test 
> file.
>
> And ELPA makes maintaining the package more painful, too: 
> picking out the commits made by others and copying them on your 
> personal repo requires further arcane git invocations — same for 
> importing new commits from your personal repo. And of course you 
> lose other MELPA goodies, like getting download statistics.
>
> For now, the main motivation to publish on ELPA is ideological — 
> not practical. My feeling is that package authors chose not to 
> publish on ELPA because they get all they need from MELPA, for a 
> fraction of the invested time.

Let me just say 'hear, hear' to that, as one of those typical 
package maintainers. I thought about using ELPA instead of MELPA a 
few times, but reading such comments as "arcane git commands", 
"mashing up your history" and "breaking the entire ELPA repo", my 
immediate reaction is "oh well, some other time, perhaps". 

I should probably point out that my git skill level is low, and 
while I'd be willing to learn more, the time investment if often 
prohibitive. (I'm not a professional programmer, just a guy with a 
hobby.) With MELPA, that's sufficient, though, and Github has a 
lot of help pages that provide clear and concise instructions for 
things I don't do every day, such as dealing with PRs or keeping a 
fork up-to-date with its upstream repo.

I've just been skimming the GNU ELPA README on 
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/elpa.git/plain/README and 
although it *looks* like once thing's are set up, I shouldn't have 
to do much more than a git push to update my package, the process 
of getting there seems quite involved.

More importantly perhaps, the entire workflow seems to be 
different. With MELPA, I put my code in a publicly accessible repo 
that I create myself, on a service of my own choosing (in my case 
Github), and then tell MELPA where to look for it. With GNU ELPA, 
it seems I need to put my code somewhere specific, and it's not in 
a repo that I create or own.

In itself, it's not a big problem that GNU ELPA uses a different 
workflow from MELPA, but, speaking for myself, it would be good if 
the ELPA README (or some other document) would contain a few 
paragraphs explaining the differences and would cover the steps 
involved in such a way that they make sense for someone with a 
less-than-stellar understanding of git.

Anyway, just my two €0.02.


-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments