Re: source-directory, installed Emacs, and C source

[sbaugh]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> From: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh@janestreet.com>
>> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 11:13:33 -0400
>> 
>> > Why would the Lisp sources not be available where Emacs installs them,
>> > i.e. in the /usr/share tree?
>> 
>> If the user ./configure'd Emacs to not install them because they prefer
>> to jump to source-directory instead.  That's what I meant by:
>
> How do you configure Emacs not to install the Lisp files?  And why?
>
>> >This would be a great improvement for users who keep source-directory
>> >around (since now Emacs jumps straight to your source repo, allowing
>> >easy modifications, and also you can skip installing Lisp source files
>> >with Emacs)
>
> Emacs is supposed to be installed _with_ Lisp files.  It is important
> to let users modify the Lisp files when they need.  So I'm not sure we
> want to support an installation where Lisp files are not available.

Yes, to be clear, I'm talking about a case where the Lisp files are in
source-directory, not where they don't exist at all.  If the Lisp files
are in source-directory and stay around there, then perhaps they don't
need to be copied to /usr/share.

But if we want to always copy them to /usr/share, that's fine, it's not
necessary to support skipping that.

My suggestion, then, is that we should allow customizing Emacs to prefer
jumping to source-directory over jumping to the installed copies of the
Lisp files.