Re: Easy configuration of a site-lisp directory

[Philip Kaludercic]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> Just wanted to ping this message to check if there is any interest in
>> doing something with my initial suggestion?
>
> I do something similar as you do, but I use it only for some loose
> files I write myself, and for some I download from emacs wiki etc.
>
>>> The fundamental idea is to have an easy-to-use ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/
>>> directory where a user can clone any repository or create their own,
>>> without having to manually add these to load-path, generate autoloads or
>>> byte compile.
>
> I have a question: is it desirable to use a working git directory as
> installed package? When I write my own files, I usually don't wish to
> copy them over to my "lisp" directory which I autoload in Emacs, untill
> I am done. Admittedly I started doing so before git has entered the
> scene. Now I guess one can switch branches every time one works on a package
> between some development branch and some stable, but isn't it a bit tedious?

Usually I don't store them in my site-lisp directory, but just symlink
what I want to use from my source code directory. If something isn't
functional or ready, there shouldn't be any reason I would want it
byte-compiled, autoloaded and ready to use by default.

If there is some critical change or something that isn't ready yet, I'd
just use "git stash".

> What you are suggesting is to effectively use "site-lisp" as another
> package-user-dir (~/.emacs.d/elpa on my machine). You are also auto
> recursing in all dirs, so if user wish to remove something they have to
> remove that directory from the path?

Yes, but I hesitate to compare it to package-user-dir, as to me packages
stand in relation to some package manager, while site-lisp.el only
implements the bare minimum.

> Why not hack pacakge.el to use "local archives", would work something like 
> this:

It could be done, but as you say it is a hack.

-- 
        Philip Kaludercic