Re: decision on moving core packages to ELPA; also move to obsolete?

[Stefan Monnier]

> So now we are talking about changing the basic logic in
> normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path and
> normal-top-level-add-to-load-path?

Not at all.

What I'm suggesting is the following:

- the tarball we build will include the same file as before in
  `emacs/lisp`.
- it will additionally contain a new directory `emacs/elpa` in which
  each bundled package has its own directory (all in the normal format
  of installed packages in ~/.emacs.d/elpa).
- the only change to the code of Emacs will be that at startup
  `package-directory-list` will include this `emacs/elpa` directory.

So until `package-activate-all` is called, the bundled packages will
just sit there on your file system but Emacs won't "see" them.

We could also place some or all of the bundled packages directly inside
`lisp` and have them be activated in the same way all other Emacs's code
is activated (i.e. basically by loading `loaddef.el` at dump time), so
they'll behave a bit less like normal packages and a bit more like Org
and Tramp do now (i.e. you can't "not have them"), but I think the above
suggestion is more conservative and flexible for the user (the downside
is that it's less efficient at startup).


        Stefan