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

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > > It would be better to offer a way that you can install your own
  > > patches _in the released version_, which is probably the version you
  > > were using and wrote the patches for, and then preserve these patches
  > > when you install new released versions.

  > That is a long term goal, but if the foundation is to be merged before
  > the next release, I have other issues that I'd like to address now and
  > then return to this for Emacs 30.

I'm not quite sure what that means -- what is the "foundation", and why
is there a hurry to merge it in?

But there is a general principle that it is better to get the external
interfaces right before installing something new.  Changing those
interfaces now won't require people to change habits; changing them
later could do so.

The code for checking out the current-version repo of an ELPA package
should be very little different from the code for checking out the
upstream repo.  If the latter is already working, getting the former
to work equally well shouldn't take long.  Would you please do that?

Once we support choosing between the two repos for a package, the name
`package-vc-install' will be ambiguous -- it could fit either of those
two cases.  It would not be a clear name to use.  So let's not define
anything now with that name.

I suggest the names `package-repo' and `package-dev-repo' for checking
out an ELPA package in these two ways, current repo and upstream/dev
repo.  (I previously envisaged other names, but don't worry about
those.)  Each of these names is clearer than `package-vc-install', and
they will make the distinction (choice of repo) clear too.

I think `package-dev-repo' would be the command now called
`package-vc-install'.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)