Re: package.el changes before the feature freeze

[Daniel Hackney <dan@haxney.org>]

Chong Yidong <cyd@gnu.org> wrote:
> Daniel Hackney <dan@haxney.org> writes:
>
>> Not all of those features will be done soon, but much of the
>> refactored base (using `defstruct' for package descriptors instead of
>> the variety of `cons'ed vectors) is in place. Could I get a few extra
>> days to get this tested?
>
> How much time are you asking for?  I'm wary of big changes to package.el
> (where backward incompatibilities can cause huge headaches) coming out
> of the blue right before a feature freeze.

I'll try to have it done by the end of the week. If I don't have
something stable enough to pull by Sunday (at the latest), go on ahead
without me. I hadn't been following the mailing list closely, so I
didn't find out about the feature freeze until just before I sent the
email.

> I took a look at your code, but the changes are too pervasive to easily
> review, and trying to load the code caused M-x list-packages to spin for
> a long time followed by
>
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function cl-adjoin)
>   cl-adjoin(((debbugs 0 3) "installed" "SOAP library to access debbugs servers") nil :key car)
>   package-menu--generate(nil t)
>   list-packages(nil)
>   call-interactively(list-packages record nil)

Weird. I'll take a look at that now.

> I have the debbugs library installed, so I'm guessing your changes screw
> up existing package installations somehow.

I tried to avoid having my change mess with that, but I'll check on the
latest dev version.

>  Have you altered the on-disk
> format of installed packages (such as directory layout, the contents of
> archive-contents, etc.)?  If so, I don't think it's suitable for 24.3.

Nope. All of the on-disk stuff is the same. I knew that on-disk changes
would be too invasive and so left the externally-facing stuff untouched.
Apparently I didn't do so well enough.

> Maybe you should split off some of the smaller parts of your altered
> package.el and commit those separately, saving the rest for post-24.3.

The essence of the change was unifying the types used. Right now, the
package description floats through the program in a couple different
formats which I thought could be combined into one.

--
Daniel Hackney