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

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org,  daniele@grinta.net,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 17:09:11 -0500
> 
> 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).

So we will have 2 copies of each package's Lisp files in the tarball?

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

This already happens, right? we already call package-activate-all at
startup, right?

> We could also place some or all of the bundled packages directly inside
> `lisp`

Now I'm confused: how 'lisp/' is different from 'emacs/lisp' you
mentioned above?

> 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).

What are the pros and cons of each of these 2 alternatives?  I think
we should carefully consider them before deciding which one we prefer.