Re: understanding emacs packages

[jadamson@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson)]

knubee <knubee@gmail.com> writes:

>> Why are you re-installing lisp packages?
>
> I recently upgraded from emacs 21.4 to 22. Some of the packages I used
> were not part of the earlier distribution. I am trying to learn about
> ways to check what is actually included in a distribution. Are slocate
> or manual inspection of site-lisp the two main options?

Those would be the *best* options: "manual inspection" is spelled "M-x dired
RET /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp RET C-s planner" to find planner.el.
It's not terribly "manual" ;)

Slocate is just "slocate planner.el" and as long as the database is up
to date, it should find it in seconds.

On my machine, if they are part of the Emacs distribution (e.g.,
Gnus), then they are in the directory corresponding to the version
number (23 in my case).  If they are not, then they are in site-lisp.
Most are single .el files, some with matching .elc files.  Some are
directories that include .el and .elc files.

>> What feature of your Linux distro would interact with Emacs packages?
>
> I ask because I do not know.

Sorry to be so didactic: what I meant was I'm not aware of anything
system wide that would affect the installation of Emacs packages.  But
then again, I stopped using package managers a while ago.  There may
very well be something in Ubuntu that puts the packages somewhere else.

>> > - Does this mean that "planner-el" is an elisp implementation of
>> > "planner"?
>>
>> Is there another possible  implementation of planner?
>
> Um. let me rephrase my question: is planner-el a *replacement* for
> "planner" -- or does it *rely* on it?

What files are contained in this "planner-el" package?  Sounds like it
may be the same thing and just have two different names.

Joel

-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109