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Re: Merging Finder into package mechanism
From: |
Chong Yidong |
Subject: |
Re: Merging Finder into package mechanism |
Date: |
Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:44:04 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux) |
Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:
>> package.el has a variable `package--builtins-base' which defines
>> packages built into Emacs. This is similar, but not identical, to the
>> Finder conception of a package. I would like to remove the discrepancy.
>
> I think Keywords should be additional package attribute
> along with Name, Version, Brief description, Long description.
There should definitely be a way to search packages by keyword, but I am
not sure if setting them as package attributes is necessary. I am
experimenting with a few different approaches, such as storing a
keyword-to-package map in the repository.
>> Eventually, finder-by-keyword should allow searching for elpa packages
>> as well as built-in packages.
>
> Finder scans local files to collect package information, so it could
> also connect to elpa.gnu.org, but this requires Internet access during
> `make finder-data'.
I don't think that's necessary. We can simply have `make finder-data'
collect information about built-in packages. During
`package-initialize' (usually called at startup), Emacs can supplement
the data in finder-inf.el using cached information about elpa.gnu.org
packages. During `package-refresh-contents', when Emacs connects to
elpa.gnu.org, it can update this information.
>> The proposed technical steps are as follows. First, merge
>> `finder-package-info' and `package--builtins-base' into a single
>> variable. This is a backward-incompatible change, but I think that's
>> acceptable, since third-party code is unlikely to make use of
>> `finder-package-info'.
>
> Does this mean that `list-packages' will list all Emacs built-in
> packages (in addition to elpa packages)? Maybe not bad, after all.
Yeah. There's a lot of built-in packages (around 400), so we should
probably also add a toggle to hide them.
Re: Merging Finder into package mechanism, Chong Yidong, 2010/08/29