Re: Core ELPA was: Testing fontification, indentation, and buffer manipulation

[Richard Stallman]

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  > Yes, well, that's the question at hand. Currently, ELPA is a place to
  > store packages that are not maintained in core. But it could also be
  > used to enable a much smaller core, with many more packages in ELPA.

I think of this as a matter of details, quantitative rather than
qualitative.

  > > I think that should be done by explicit command, not automatically or
  > > spontaneously, and not as part of building Emacs.

  > Indeed, that is the status quo. But it is problematic, because users
  > have to know about the package in ELPA to install it in the first
  > place.

I think we are miscommunicating.  I'm talking about the procedure for
building the core Emacs release.  That is what was brought up before.

You seem to be talking now about how users use a given ELPA package.
These are fundamentally separate issues.

How to inform users about ELPA packages is also a separate issue.

  > A smaller "core" would allow a more rapid release cycle. Many of the
  > packages could be maintained independently; missing a release cycle
  > would no longer mean users waiting a year or two for an update.

Maybe you're right, but that's a different issue.  We can discuss that
later -- for now, let's focus on the question of building the Emacs
core.

  > > I think you have changed the subject,
  > > but since what you said is very general, I can't be sure.
  > >
  > > What sort of things do you mean?

  > All the dev-tools -- compilers, headers, autoconf.

To build a package requires having the build tools loaded.
That is natural.

What ELPA contains is not build tools for Emacs,
but add-ons for Emacs.  It is not natural that building
program A requires all its add-ons to be loaded.,


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)