Re: BBDB v3 approaching release

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Eli Zaretskii writes:
 > > From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
 > > Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 02:55:49 +0900
 > > 
 > > Ah, I didn't know what bbdb-print does.
 > > 
 > > Now that I do, I don't see what's so hard about
 > > 
 > > (shell-command (format "TEXINPUTS=%s%s tex %s"
 > >                        (bbdb-style-file-directory)
 > >                        (getenv "TEXINPUTS")
 > >                        file-to-tex))
 > 
 > That it only works with a Posixy shell?

Last I heard Emacs doesn't have a policy that says that's a
showstopper, although it won't stop you from fixing it if you like.
Anyway, I'm sure there's a way to work around it with enough effort.
I'm just not going to make it.  The code above is proof of concept,
not a patch submission to Emacs (or BBDB for that matter).

The practical deal-breaker for "install in the right place" is that
Emacs doesn't "own" the texmf hierarchies, so you can't guarantee that
ELPA can install those sources "where they belong" according to
tradition or FHS.  Given that, I don't see why anybody should care
where they are installed, as long as BBDB can find them.

Ted Z's proposal for enhancing ELPA packages' ability to find their
stuff is a first step in the right direction, I think.  But AFAIK
there is no spec for *user* FHS.  Python has been playing around with
~/.local among others (I think that may be an fd.o draft standard or
something?)  If that were to become widespread, you could add ~/.local
to your kpathsea path, and that would be a big win.  Failing that (ie,
for the foreseeable future), I think what ELPA should do is provide a
suite of functions for finding package resources such as elisp
(installed), the source tree, graphics and other multimedia, helper
files for external apps (eg, the bbdb-print TeX style files), helper
executables, and so on.