Re: shipping elisp for notmuch in elpa-notmuch debian package

[David Bremner <david@tethera.net>]

Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> writes:

> Hi Notmuch folks--
>
> In the course of trying to figure out the dh_missing warnings, I've been
> looking into what we ship in debian in the elpa-notmuch package.
>
> Dubious files
> -------------
>
> elpa-notmuch currently ships a few files in
> /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/elpa-src/notmuch-*/ that i'm not convinced we
> actually want to ship in the distributed package.
>
> Those are:
>
>     rstdoc.el
>     make-deps.el
>     dir

the first two are build tools. The latter is needed by the info files.

>
> Do we need any of the above in the elpa-notmuch package?
>
> info files
> ----------
>
> The package also ships a bunch of *.info files in that elpa
> module-specific directory, rather than shipping them in the typical
> /usr/share/info/ location.  These info files appear to be translations
> of the manpages or other basic notmuch documentation.  Is there a reason
> to ship them in the elpa-specific directory?
>

It makes the elpa (make elpa) package self contained (with docs).
package.el knows how to install info files, so the debian-specific
tooling is not needed.

> notmuch-pkg.el
> --------------
>
> I note that notmuch-pkg.el is installed in elpa-notmuch, but it is *not*
> in /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp when installed via the standard "make
> install".  i don't know enough about how that installation is supposed
> to work, but if it's supposed to drop in a notmuch-pkg.el, then
> something needs fixing in the baseline "make install".

It's metadata for the elpa (package.el) package. Not sure it is helpful
in the standard install, but I don't really use the standard install, so
I'm open to ideas