Re: Fetching or installing package dev source from VCS: manual style

[Philip Kaludercic]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   >   If you have made a change you wish to share
>   > with the maintainers, first commit your changes then use the command
>   > @code{package-vc-prepare-patch} to share it.  @xref{Preparing Patches}.
>
> This presumes that a user who suggests a patch to a program will or
> should commit that change to some repo in order to email the a patch.
> This is an extra step and seems like a gratuitous requirement.
>
> When I write and suggest a patch in a program that I don't intend to
> maintain a version of, I don't even think of doing that.  I use M-x
> diff to make the patch to email, because that is the natural Emacs
> way.
>
> I think the command should be named `package-prepare-patch', and it
> should be able to handle either way of working, with version control
> or without.

IMO in that case Emacs already does everything you need and there is no
point in adding an additional command.  `package-prepare-patch' would be
part of package.el, and couldn't make use of the versioning history to
generate a diff.