From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Masterson Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Software/HD ecology Date: 12 Dec 2002 15:23:35 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+gnu-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <041220020952400758%ajanta@no.spam> <56cfb0e3.0212041458.5eab182a@posting.google.com> <061220020416350201%ajanta@no.spam> <071220021155280606%ajanta@no.spam> <5ld6obj8il.fsf@rum.cs.yale.edu> <091220021652087216%ajanta@no.spam> <111220021101520860%ajanta@no.spam> <111220021253524057%ajanta@no.spam> <84of7s703d.fsf@lucy.cs.uni-dortmund.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1039735629 3340 80.91.224.249 (12 Dec 2002 23:27:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 23:27:09 +0000 (UTC) Return-path: Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18McjT-0000rh-00 for ; Fri, 13 Dec 2002 00:27:08 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10.13) id 18Mchp-0003IT-05 for gnu-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 12 Dec 2002 18:25:25 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.text.tex,gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1 Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 56 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu comp.sys.mac.apps:348759 gnu.emacs.help:108067 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1b5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+gnu-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:4598 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help:4598 >>>>> Kai Großjohann writes: > Most important of all, it's not clear what to delete. There would > be *endless* arguments about which files to remove and which files > to keep. Emacs consists of 2297 files (on my system), it's very > difficult to untangle dependencies on them. Thus the need to "package-ize" Emacs. Then, to uninstall Emacs, you uninstall all the packages and uninstall the base Emacs. The notion is that recursion takes care of the packages. > Then the ask how to send mail, and I tell them to type M-x > finder-commentary RET smtpmail RET. This command prints some > documentation which is extracted from the beginning of the file > smtpmail.el. > But they don't have that file installed! At which point, finder-commentary should probably say that that package is not installed and (perhaps) point the user to the Internet (mirror) sites where they might find the package. > So, even the simple idea of `people don't want to look at the source > code, people just want to run the resulting binary' has failed! There's a chicken and egg view in this statement. One view of Emacs is that it is a program and, therefore, everything you want it to do should "just be there". Another view is that Emacs is an O/S where packages are installed on top of it and, therefore, there needs to be simple tools to add those packages in. > That said, XEmacs has the so-called package system which is a very > nifty thing indeed. You install a base package of XEmacs which can > do almost nothing at all, and then you start installing XEmacs > packages which contain the Lisp code for various things. It's very > easy this way to upgrade the packages that you have installed. > But then, a lot of XEmacs users install the Sumo tarball I think > which just contains all available packages :-) (Caveat: I'm not an > XEmacs user, so what do I know what `a lot of XEmacs users' do!) XEmacs actually has two tools for this. It's been quite awhile since I used the UNIX tool for managing packages in XEmacs. My typical environment is to use the Cygwin-like install tool on Windows-NT to manage XEmacs and it's packages. That tool is a separate program from XEmacs and, so, you don't have a chicken and egg problem that (I believe) XEmacs has on UNIX. That is, on UNIX, when installing XEmacs for the first time, there is the question of what do you install so that you have enough functionality to install all the other packages? Many people opt-out of answering that by just installing the Sumo, but thereafter they can use the package tool in XEmacs. -- David Masterson David DOT Masterson AT synopsys DOT com Sr. R&D Engineer Synopsys, Inc. Software Engineering Sunnyvale, CA