Re: a filesystem-based package repository

[Stefan Monnier]

> Getting any software into the company involves going through a lengthy
> process of requesting individual files to be downloaded, security checked,
> legally checked (thankfully GPL is allowed for applications) and made
> available on an NFS drive.

I assume that doesn't apply to the megabytes of Javascript code
routinely downloaded and executed when you use your web browser ;-)

> There are quite a few Emacs users in the company (100+) and we'd be really
> interested in approximating ELPA as much as possible. However, the packages
> must live in the NFS drive under the following immutable structure, per
> file:

> /nfs/emacs/<module-name>/<module-version>/<module-name>-<module-version>.(el|tar)

Note that there are 2 ways to do that:
- try to provide a directory that has the structure of an ELPA archive.
  Users can then add it to package-archives and install packages from it
  using M-x package-list and friends.
- try to provide "pre-installed" packages.  These could live in
  directories like

     /nfs/emacs/<module-name>

  and users can then "install" those by doing something like

     ln -s /nfs/emacs/<module-name> ~/.emacs.d/elpa/

  Updating those packages would be done centrally (which has its
  advantages and disadvantages, of course).


--Stefan