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

[Stefan Monnier]

Philip Kaludercic [2022-10-24 20:34:31] wrote:
> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>> 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/";)`
>
> Looks fine in principle, Would this only apply to non-Git repositories
> that just happen to look like a URL?

All non-Git repositories have such a URL, AFAIK, but yes, we'd use that
for all non-Git repositories (all 3 of them :-).


        Stefan