Re: Easy configuration of a site-lisp directory

["Clément Pit-Claudel" <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>]

On 8/10/21 11:10 AM, Yuri Khan wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2021 at 21:01, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>>> I have an unconfirmed guess that some people want not only to see the
>>> code but also hack it. In this use case, it is desirable for M-. to
>>> take them to the actual hackable code so that any changes persist
>>> across Emacs restarts and are seen by version control.
>>
>> But the .el.gz files that Emacs displays _are_ "hackable", in the
>> sense that you can modify it and then save the results.  Right?
> 
> Right… technically.
> 
> 0. I[*] have an itch and go to scratch it. M-. takes me to an .el.gz
> somewhere in /usr/share/emacs.
> 1. I want to start hacking but the buffer is read-only because (x): my
> regular user does not have write access to system-wide
> platform-independent files.
> 1a. I can switch to the hackable /home/me/src/emacs/lisp/{filename}.el
> right away while lamenting that M-. did not take me right there, or
> 1b. I can press C-x C-q to remove the readonlyness. For the sake of
> argument, let’s see where this leads.
> 2. I make a change and want to save it. I cannot because (x).
> 2a. Again, at this point, I can C-x C-w
> /home/you/src/emacs/lisp/{filename}.el, cursing under my breath.
> Alternatively,
> 2b. Since I have admin rights, I can take ownership or loosen access
> rights on the file so I can save it. Again, let’s say I do this just
> to prove a point.
> 3. I finish my work and want to do a self-review before committing.
> But /usr/share/emacs is not under version control and I did not make a
> backup and now I still have to go to my git clone.

I think that's a perfect description of my typical flow :) And I think Arthur's suggestion is right: I shouldn't make install, just run from src/.