Re: Future role of ELPA

[Christian Kruse]

Hi,

I am an Emacs user as well, and I so much disagree with you.

Stefan Reichör <address@hidden> writes:

> As I user I am not happy with that direction.
> Let me try to explain it.
> I use Emacs since about 20 years. I use it daily and it is my primary
> interface to computer related tasks. For sure I can adopt to what ever
> direction emacs goes.

17 year here, since ‘99. I use Emacs for nearly everything as well.

> I use a hand crafted .emacs and I am used to install emacs packes
> manually to a site-lisp folders.

Me, too, and I hated it. It was *SO* much work to keep track of
everything I installed this way; for bigger packages I even had to
change the load path to get it installed properly.

Nowadays I just hit „install“ - done.

> With GNU ELPA I have to install the package first and get rid of it if I
> don't like it.

That’s easier now as well. Just `rm -rf` the sub-directory in the elpa
directory and be done with it. Try to remove e.g. org-mode from the
Emacs distribution.

> My main concern with GNU ELPA is that I have to install a lot of extra
> packages manually using the package manager. When they are built-in they
> are just there.

That’s exactly what I like about ELPA. I decide what I’d like to have
installed, and not some maintainer. For example I would never install
tramp, this bugged piece of software caused me so much trouble (for
example, `/dev/null` gets overwritten everytime I use tramp and I have
to do a `mknod` everytime to re-create it).

Moving more things to ELPA means more control for me, and it also means
faster bugfixes for packages I use. I don’t have to wait for a new Emacs
release to get a bugfix for e.g. org-mode, but I can install a new
version as soon as it has been released just by hitting enter on the
install button.

I totally like the way of moving things to ELPA.

Best regards,
-- 
Christian Kruse
https://wwwtech.de/about

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