Re: emacs packages

[Federico Beffa]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 11:12 PM, Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> wrote:
> Federico Beffa <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>>> guix.el already takes care of that (info "(guix) Emacs Initial Setup"),
>>>>> so that should be enough.
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately this doesn't work without modification. The reason is
>>>> that I follow the emacs package.el strategy to install each ELPA
>>>> package in it's own sub-directory. Specifically, I'm installing each
>>>> package into ".../site-lisp/guix.d/PACKAGE-NAME-VERSION/".  The code
>>>> in 'guix.el', however, doesn't look in sub-directories below the
>>>> profile's '.../site-lisp'.
>>>
>>> What does it bring us to follow package.el’s strategy?
>>>
>>> My impression is that we could simply follow what guix.el already does,
>>> and thus avoid that guix.d/PACKAGE-VERSION sub-directory.  Of course we
>>> can adjust guix.el as we see fit, but package.el is a completely
>>> separate beast anyway.  Am I missing something?
>>
>> Hi Ludo,
>>
>> the reason for using separate sub-directories is that many packages
>> include files, such as README, ChangeLog, ..., that are likely to
>> clash. Even if we would delete all non ".el" files (which probably is
>> not safe), with more than 2500 packages on MELPA, it is possible that
>> we would still experience some name clashes. I can imagine that
>> someone preparing a package may be unaware of the existence of some
>> other package, possibly not very popular in his circle.
>
> What about copying all the .el files to .../site-lisp, and copy the
> other files elsewhere (for instance, ‘README’ and ‘ChangeLog’ to
> share/doc/$PACKAGE, and .info files to share/info)?

I am copying .info files to share/info. I'm not copying README files
to share/doc because these usually do not provide useful documentation
for the user and ChangeLog are usually not up-to-date relict. But if
somebody feels strongly about it, I can change that.

>
> Note that name clashes in profiles are annoying, but not fatal.

For .el files they are.

I also do not think that it is very sane ending up with a flat
directory including hundreds of files. Some hierarchy makes the
organization much more apparent and clean.

Regards,
Fede