bug#75383: [BUG] Behavior of package.el with local archives

[Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou <nchatz314@gmail.com>]

Hello list,

I wanted to set up my own local archive.

From reading (elisp)Creating and Maintaining Package Archives, especially:

> A package archive is simply a directory in which the package files,
and associated files, are stored.

I figured that all I had to do was (add-to-list 'package-archives
'(("my-test-archive" . "~/test"))), and (add-to-list
'package-unsigned-archives "my-test-archive"), and simply include the
single-file .el packages in the ~/test directory, and then a M-x
package-refresh-contents would update the package list and allow me to
install them.

Unfortunately I ran into problems, as the refresh function was failing
to access the local archive, and from digging around a bit the
function `package-refresh-contents' is expecting an "archive-contents"
file.

I'd like to ask, does package.el support local archives? If yes,
should they have an archive-contents file? If not, should the above
info page be modified to be more explicit about the fact that archives
are remote only?

Regards,
Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou