Re: org-plus-contrib: Invalid function: org-no-popups

[Bastien <bzg@altern.org>]

Hi Achim,

Achim Gratz <Stromeko@nexgo.de> writes:

> My reading comprehension may be at an all-time low, but this is what you
> wrote in another thread:
>
>>>> This [removing Org from ELPA -ed] is using Org users as hostages, I
>>>> don't want to do this.
>
>> I think this is an option.
>
> Hm… I'm obviously missing some piece.

Yes :)   This is were misunderstanding started:

,----
| > I've to admit that I've had that thought too, but it seems that doing
| > this would perhaps even lower the attention that Emacs' maintainers give
| > to that problem.  
| 
| This is using Org users as hostages, I don't want to do this.
`----

What I meant is this: "Using the fact that Org/ELPA users suffer from
a bug in package.el in hope that this will make Emacs maintainers fix
the package.el bug is using Org/ELPA users as hostages."  (Obviously
my "this" where not equivalent to your "that" in the passage quoted
above.)

>> How can you make sure that Org-mode has not been used before people 
>> want to install an updated version through GNU/Org ELPA?
>
> That's what the patch does that you didn't like.

I don't like it for at least these reasons:

- it introduces an advice in the code -- we should work toward
  removing them, not adding them.

- it advices `require', which is a very core function in Emacs.

This is completely hackish.

>> I can't think of any good way.
>>
>> Until someone have an idea about this, I'm very serious about removing
>> the possibility of installing Org through ELPA.  But as I said I won't
>> do this before getting a sense of what the users use and expect.
>
> There are exactly two possibilities to get into this situation:
>
> The first is using Org anything before opening the package manager.  I
> think it should be possible to educate users that it's better t use a
> fresh Emacs instance for updating or installing packages until this has
> been fixed in package manager.

This is like telling Windows users to reboot their system so that it
can works correctly (remember the old days?).  It feels wrong.  And I 
doubt we can educate the users -- there are many of them, and many
don't have the time to tell they have a problem.

> The second are things like starter-kit.  I'm thinking that it should be
> the responsibility of such software to load and unload Org if they
> really need to use it before activating packages and ask for support
> from Emacs devs in how to do this properly.  Package manager is a first
> class citizen of Emacs by now which means any add-on has to cope with
> its existence.  It's interesting to see that the bugs seem to get
> chalked up to the packages that are in ELPA rather than the mechanisms
> that install them (or prevent proper initialization of Emacs) and it
> kind of seems to fly under the radar for this reason even though it
> seems to affect many users and has had for quite some time already.

I'm not sure what solution you suggest here.

In general, I think the benefit of having several ELPA distributions
of Org is not worth the trouble of dealing with installation issues.

-- 
 Bastien