Re: feature/package+vc 04c4c578c7 3/4: Allow for packages to be installed directly from VCS

[Stefan Monnier]

Philip Kaludercic [2022-10-24 15:35:42] wrote:
> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>>> One thing I recently noticed are :url entries of the form
>>>     "bzr::https://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/org-edna-el";
>>>
>>> or
>>>
>>>     "hg::https://hg.savannah.nongnu.org/hgweb/enwc/";
>>>
>>> How are these handled?  I couldn't find anything specific to this in
>>> elpa-admin.el.  Is this a Git feature?
>>
>> Yes, it's a Git feature.  Git will use the `git-remote-FOO` extension to
>> access those repositories.  In my experience it tends not to work super
>> reliably and those extensions aren't installed in `elpa.gnu.org` so we
>> don't auto-update from those repositories.
>
> That also means that these repositories should either be filtered out
> from elpa-packages.eld or the format should indicate that VC backend is used.

The current format will work for those users who have the corresponding
`git-remote-<BACKEND>` adapter installed, but yes I guess we need to
refine a bit what we mean by a "URL".  Currently it's actually not
really a URL but the "name" of a Git repository, tho it happens to look
very much like a URL.

Maybe we could use something like

    `:url (hg "https://hg.savannah.nongnu.org/hgweb/enwc/";)`


-- Stefan