Re: What exactly does "installing a package" mean?

[Joost Kremers <joost.m.kremers@gmail.com>]

Emanuel Berg wrote:
> But, to answer your question, no, there is nothing to
> it but files and directories, just like everything
> else on a Unix system.

Well, that's a bit of a naive statement. Of course it's all files and
directories, the question is, *which* files and directories. If Emacs
were to keep a list of installed packages and would save this list to,
say, `~/.emacs.d`, then it would still be "all files and directories",
but as an Emacs user, you might still run into trouble if you delete a
package from `package-user-dir` but do not update the file containing
the list of installed packages.

For example, if you remove the files of a package xyz on a
Debian(-based) system, dpkg will still think xyz installed, because its
own database still says it is.


-- 
Joost Kremers                                   joostkremers@fastmail.fm
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)