From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: package.el, auto-installation, and auto-removal Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:55:28 +0000 Message-ID: <87ppcvm7fj.fsf@newcastle.ac.uk> References: <87a943umku.fsf@lifelogs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1415631378 25048 80.91.229.3 (10 Nov 2014 14:56:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:56:18 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Nov 10 15:56:10 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNs-0007yf-Th for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:56:01 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:43707 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNs-0004rH-1d for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:56:00 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:46887) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNW-0004rB-Lm for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:55:47 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNS-0007ic-8V for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:55:38 -0500 Original-Received: from cheviot22.ncl.ac.uk ([128.240.234.22]:49280) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNR-0007iI-Pc for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:55:34 -0500 Original-Received: from smtpauth-vm.ncl.ac.uk ([10.8.233.129] helo=smtpauth.ncl.ac.uk) by cheviot22.ncl.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNM-000794-Ex for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:55:29 +0000 Original-Received: from jangai.ncl.ac.uk ([10.66.67.223] helo=localhost) by smtpauth.ncl.ac.uk with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES128-SHA:128) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1XnqNM-000775-Ht for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:55:28 +0000 In-Reply-To: <87a943umku.fsf@lifelogs.com> (Ted Zlatanov's message of "Fri, 7 Nov 2014 09:12:01 -0500") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 128.240.234.22 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:176684 Archived-At: Ted Zlatanov writes: > On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 08:45:51 -0500 Stefan Monnier wrote: > > SM> `package.el' is great to install packages more easily, but it falls short > SM> when you want to keep the same set of installed packages on various > SM> machines, or when it's time to remove package you don't need because it > SM> doesn't distinguish between the packages you want and those required > SM> by those packages. > > (CC to Robert Dallas Gray, Pallet's author) > > Pallet does this: https://github.com/rdallasgray/pallet > > I am not crazy about Cask because it requires Python, but the simplicity > of Pallet itself is appealing. It uses advice and can be easily > improved to integrate better with package.el with a few hooks. > Cask does use python, but only to launch emacs. Mostly the python side finds an executable, works out what version it is and so forth. If it were distributed with Emacs, all of this would be unnecessary (since it would all be known in advance). It should be possible to produce a shell/bat file for most OSes. One advantage of having a command line tool for updating Emacs is that it would solve at least some of the current problems of updating packages in a running Emacs. > Pallet is GPL-ed and I don't know if the author would be interested in > assigning the copyright to Emacs and modifying Pallet to support a > non-Cask package maintenance backend. If that was possible, the problem > would be reduced to writing that backend and the package.el hooks. > Otherwise I think at least looking at pallet.el is worthwhile. All pallet does is pimp up package.el so that it rewrites the Cask file. And (from a package management POV) all cask does is run package.el. Phil