Re: [elpa] master 872014e: Prevent accidental deletion of .git

[Stefan Monnier]

>> We'd also want to try and fix the directory-deletion code accordingly,
>> so it's less trigger happy.
> I've been looking at how to do this, but I'm not sure exactly what
> you're after.  The following is from the perspective of "in place"
> development.

Yes, that's the important case.

> There are lots of points where directory deletion happens in GNUmakefile
> and archive-contents.el, during both "make externals" and "make
> archive".

Deletion in "make archive" is not a problem, AFAICT.

> As for "make externals", I don't really like the concept of it, because
> it mixes the build process with source configuration management.  For
> example, this directory deletion could remove in-progress work from my
> source directory, under elpa/packages:

Exactly.

>    ;; Check if `dir' is under version control.
>    ((not (zerop (call-process "git" nil nil nil
>                               "ls-files" "--error-unmatch" dir)))
>     (message "Deleted untracked package %s" dir)
>     (delete-directory dir 'recursive t))
>
> I would never expect that when invoking make.  I would rather "git
> status" tell me that I have untracked changes.

Yes, this is the problematic case.  This case is the one that intends to
handle the situation where we removed a :core package from
externals-list.

Presumably the call-process check should make sure this directory is not
under Git control at all, so no amount of "git status" will help.

So here, instead of delete-directory we should use a new function which
is a lot more careful, so it only deletes data which it has earlier
created for a :core package.  If the :core packages are handled via
symlinks, then this can be done by checking that the directory only
contains symlinks (or subdirs with the same property).  Of course there
are other ways, such as keeping track somewhere of the files we've
installed as :core, and then check this info before we delete files.

> I didn't closely follow the discussions while this was being designed.
> Was there some reason to avoid git submodules?

"git submodules" could make sense (and I did consider them) for
the :external packages, but these aren't affected by this code (since
the call-process should indicate that they are under Git).

> It seems possible to replace "make externals" with submodules that
> track "remote" externals/ branches of elpa.git itself, with git >=
> 1.8.2.

IIRC the issue with git submodules is that they have to refer to
a particular revision rather than to a branch, so additionally to
committing new code on the external branch, you'd then have to go and
commit a change to master that updates the submodule reference to point
to the new revision at the head of the external branch.


        Stefan