Could we organize all Emacs packages with a single repo system?

Could we organize all Emacs packages with a single repo system?

[Andrew Pennebaker]

Marmalade and MELPA are really cool. I'd love to see their packages merged
into a single system (Marmalade or MELPA, doesn't matter), to reduce
confusion.

There are some cool packages only in Marmalade, and some nifty packages
only in MELPA, so I have to instruct Emacs to check *both* repos in my
.emacs :P Yuck.

If the repos hold different versions, you could get nasty dependency
conflicts.

And we could finally build in support for the repo into Emacs, so users
don't have to manually insert the default repo into .emacs. I think M-x
install-package xyz should work out of the box, zero configuration required.

Of course, configuration would still be available, should further repos
spring up, and users want to prioritize them over the default one.

Personally, I'd prefer MELPA for its distributed, git-based approach. But
it's more important to me that Emacs get a standard package management
system akin to RubyGems, that runs out of the box with no configuration
required, to make things easier.

Re: Could we organize all Emacs packages with a single repo system?

[Jude DaShiell]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2013, Andrew Pennebaker wrote:

> Marmalade and MELPA are really cool. I'd love to see their packages merged
> into a single system (Marmalade or MELPA, doesn't matter), to reduce
> confusion.
> 
> There are some cool packages only in Marmalade, and some nifty packages
> only in MELPA, so I have to instruct Emacs to check *both* repos in my
> .emacs :P Yuck.
> 
> If the repos hold different versions, you could get nasty dependency
> conflicts.
> 
> And we could finally build in support for the repo into Emacs, so users
> don't have to manually insert the default repo into .emacs. I think M-x
> install-package xyz should work out of the box, zero configuration required.
> 
> Of course, configuration would still be available, should further repos
> spring up, and users want to prioritize them over the default one.
> 
> Personally, I'd prefer MELPA for its distributed, git-based approach. But
> it's more important to me that Emacs get a standard package management
> system akin to RubyGems, that runs out of the box with no configuration
> required, to make things easier.
> 
I hope that never happens, monolythic targets don't have survival 
redundancy and would be an easy target for the malware writers out there.

> 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net> About to block another web browser version?  
Ask yourself what Tim Berners-lee would do.

Re: Could we organize all Emacs packages with a single repo system?

[W. Greenhouse]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Pennebaker <apennebaker-1+3+CK3w1TUAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:

> Marmalade and MELPA are really cool. I'd love to see their packages merged
> into a single system (Marmalade or MELPA, doesn't matter), to reduce
> confusion.
>
> There are some cool packages only in Marmalade, and some nifty packages
> only in MELPA, so I have to instruct Emacs to check *both* repos in my
> .emacs :P Yuck.
>
> If the repos hold different versions, you could get nasty dependency
> conflicts.
>
> And we could finally build in support for the repo into Emacs, so users
> don't have to manually insert the default repo into .emacs. I think M-x
> install-package xyz should work out of the box, zero configuration required.
>
> Of course, configuration would still be available, should further repos
> spring up, and users want to prioritize them over the default one.
>
> Personally, I'd prefer MELPA for its distributed, git-based approach. But
> it's more important to me that Emacs get a standard package management
> system akin to RubyGems, that runs out of the box with no configuration
> required, to make things easier.

FWIW, the `package-archives' already does come preconfigured with the
official GNU ELPA repositoriy as a default:

$ emacs -q

M-: package-archives RET => (("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/"))

I think that's fine.  I would encourage anyone who's willing to go
through the copyright assignment process to become an Emacs contributor
to put their work in the GNU ELPA (the rules for each are the same).
This is difficult, ethically or practically, for some, which is why we
have the alternate repositories.  Marmalade and MELPA represent
different valid ideas about how to package stuff for Emacs; in Marmalade
the developers themselves do the packaging, while in MELPA, packages are
generated programmatically from upstream sources.  MELPA thus generally
represents a more "bleeding edge" idea of releasing packages.

A more important issue revealed by what you're saying is the fact that
package.el at present lacks a system for overriding the default behavior
of installing the highest-numbered version of a package (something like
`apt-pinning' in Debian).  package.el also lacks support for
cryptographically signed packages/repositories at the moment, which is a
big issue.  Both of these issues are being worked on; hopefully people
will also start submitting more of their stuff to GNU ELPA and helping
it grow.

--
Regards,
WGG

Re: Could we organize all Emacs packages with a single repo system?

[Phillip Lord]

Andrew Pennebaker <apennebaker@42six.com> writes:
> Personally, I'd prefer MELPA for its distributed, git-based approach. But
> it's more important to me that Emacs get a standard package management
> system akin to RubyGems, that runs out of the box with no configuration
> required, to make things easier.


There is also el-get which works like MELPA, but without the server;
the recipes tell your own machine how to get the various files you need. 

Or my own git-update.el which is like el-get but no advantages, except
that it loads quicker.

Phil