Re: [PATCH 3/5] build: Add 'emacs-build-system'

[Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com>]

Federico Beffa (2015-07-07 10:21 +0300) wrote:

> Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Wouldn't it be better to name it "elpa-build-system" as that's what it
>> is in my opinion, since it does not retrieve the source directly from
>> upstream but from ELPA/MELPA/... "repositories" instead.
>
> The build system doesn't assume anything about the source location.
>>
>> I imagine there may appear another build system for simple emacs
>> packages (that don't provide Makefile, etc.) that will compile elisp
>> files, generate autoloads and so on.  I think it will be a system that
>> should be called "emacs-build-system".  WDYT?
>
> That's what the proposed build system does. If it lacks some
> functionality that you think is desirable, I think it is better to add
> it here rather than adding another, almost identical, build system.

Ah, I'm very sorry, You are right; emacs build system and elpa importer
were mixed in my head :-)

A side note: I think generally it would be preferable to use an upstream
release in the package recipe rather than to use a melpa(-stable) URL,
i.e.:

  http://foo-upstream.org/foo-0.1.tar.gz  instead of
  http://stable.melpa.org/packages/foo-0.1.tar

Also along with the concern that melpa stores a tarball only for the
latest package version I think I've found another problem that will
happen with a package from any repository: there are many single-file
packages and these ones are not put in tarballs.  I mean the package in
this case is just a simple elisp file, so the 'unpack' will fail.

Look at <http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/rainbow-mode.html> for example:

  guix import elpa --archive=gnu rainbow-mode

gives a package that fails on 'unpack' phase.

-- 
Alex