Re: [nongnu] main 385623dca6 2/2: * elpa-packages (notmuch): New package.

Re: [nongnu] main 385623dca6 2/2: * elpa-packages (notmuch): New package.

[Sean Whitton]

Hello notmuch maintainers,

As discussed on IRC, I'm seeing if I can add notmuch.el to NonGNU ELPA.

Currently the build is failing and Stefan Monnier, who designed the
packaging scripts, suggests adding a Version: header to notmuch.el:

On Tue 20 Dec 2022 at 02:44PM -05, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> +  :make ("emacs/notmuch-pkg.el" "emacs/notmuch-version.el")
>
> (Non)GNU ELPA really wants to create the <foo>-pkg.el from the headers
> in the <foo>.el main file.  The above may sometimes work but will bite
> us sooner or later.
>
>> +  ;; FIXME: notmuch-pkg.el is not committed to Git.
>
> Please don't fix this.  If it's in the Git it gets worse (tends to
> create spurious conflicts while building the package.  Our scripts
> *should* be resilient to such problems, but based on past experience,
> I doubt they are yet in all cases).
> [...]
> The fix should start by adding a `Version:` to the `notmuch.el` file.
> [...]
> But in any case, a `grep 0.37` in the repository shows that they already
> have two copies of the version number (one in `version.txt` and one in
> `bindings/python/notmuch/version.py`), so adding a third shouldn't
> be a big deal.

I know that you don't want to commit notmuch-pkg.el to git, and that's
in fact undesirable from a NonGNU ELPA point of view, it turns out.  But
given how there is already version.txt and version.py, could we have a
header in notmuch.el too, do you think?

Thanks.

-- 
Sean Whitton

Re: [nongnu] main 385623dca6 2/2: * elpa-packages (notmuch): New package.

[Stefan Monnier]

> I know that you don't want to commit notmuch-pkg.el to git, and that's
> in fact undesirable from a NonGNU ELPA point of view, it turns out.  But
> given how there is already version.txt and version.py, could we have a
> header in notmuch.el too, do you think?

BTW, in an ideal world (from the perspective of NonGNU ELPA as well as
that of those Emacs users who install the Notmuch ELisp package via
things like Borg, Straight, or `package-vc`, but install the rest of
Notmuch some other way (e.g. from their GNU/Linux distribution)) the
`emacs` subdirectory would be split into its own branch or repository.


        Stefan

Re: [nongnu] main 385623dca6 2/2: * elpa-packages (notmuch): New package.

[David Bremner]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I know that you don't want to commit notmuch-pkg.el to git, and that's
>> in fact undesirable from a NonGNU ELPA point of view, it turns out.  But
>> given how there is already version.txt and version.py, could we have a
>> header in notmuch.el too, do you think?
>
> BTW, in an ideal world (from the perspective of NonGNU ELPA as well as
> that of those Emacs users who install the Notmuch ELisp package via
> things like Borg, Straight, or `package-vc`, but install the rest of
> Notmuch some other way (e.g. from their GNU/Linux distribution)) the
> `emacs` subdirectory would be split into its own branch or repository.

This is not likely to happen any time soon. The emacs front-end is
developed (and tested) in tandem with the C/C++ backend and the
sphinx-doc based documentation.

Running the latest emacs front-end against an arbitrarily old version of
the notmuch binaries has never been supported, hence the following
commentary in notmuch.el.

;; Note for MELPA users (and others tracking the development version
;; of notmuch-emacs):
;;
;; This emacs package needs a fairly closely matched version of the
;; notmuch program. If you use the MELPA version of notmuch.el (as
;; opposed to MELPA stable), you should be prepared to track the
;; master development branch (i.e. build from git) for the notmuch
;; program as well. Upgrading notmuch-emacs too far beyond the notmuch
;; program can CAUSE YOUR EMAIL TO STOP WORKING.
;;
;; TL;DR: notmuch-emacs from MELPA and notmuch from distro packages is
;; NOT SUPPORTED.

Of course it's free software, and people can do what they like, but it
does give some idea of where we going to focus our limited resources.

Re: [nongnu] main 385623dca6 2/2: * elpa-packages (notmuch): New package.

[David Bremner]

Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes:

>
> I know that you don't want to commit notmuch-pkg.el to git, and that's
> in fact undesirable from a NonGNU ELPA point of view, it turns out.  But
> given how there is already version.txt and version.py, could we have a
> header in notmuch.el too, do you think?

The existence of version.py is a bug that we hope to fix soon. It is
used only by the obsolete and deprecated python bindings. Current
bindings (under bindings/python-cffi) use version.txt.

Adding a version header to notmuch.el and maintaining it
semi-automatically in the way version.py is seems more fragile (sed'ing
a file also edited by humans) and more work (the code to generate
notmuch-pkg.el already exists).

Re: [nongnu] main 385623dca6 2/2: * elpa-packages (notmuch): New package.

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Wed 21 Dec 2022 at 07:53AM -04, David Bremner wrote:

> Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes:
>
>>
>> I know that you don't want to commit notmuch-pkg.el to git, and that's
>> in fact undesirable from a NonGNU ELPA point of view, it turns out.  But
>> given how there is already version.txt and version.py, could we have a
>> header in notmuch.el too, do you think?
>
> The existence of version.py is a bug that we hope to fix soon. It is
> used only by the obsolete and deprecated python bindings. Current
> bindings (under bindings/python-cffi) use version.txt.
>
> Adding a version header to notmuch.el and maintaining it
> semi-automatically in the way version.py is seems more fragile (sed'ing
> a file also edited by humans) and more work (the code to generate
> notmuch-pkg.el already exists).

Okay, thanks.  We can investigate whether we can get the
branch-filtering script to substitute in the version.

-- 
Sean Whitton