On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 9:01 AM Stefan Monnier <
address@hidden> wrote:
> What other GNU project installs sources, let alone by default?
> Why should Emacs be different?
Because Emacs provides buttons to jump straight to the source.
I think it is an important feature of Emacs that the source code is
always within easy reach. I feel it makes it "Freer": we don't just
allow the users to have access to the source, we even encourage them to
dig into it.
Stefan
Just want to say +1 to this, and to Paul's proposal. I'm just a "regular" Emacs user (i.e. not a contributor) but the ability to inspect Emacs' Elisp effortlessly is one of my favorite things about the program, and it really raises Emacs to its own class. The ability to modify Emacs' behavior is made considerably more meaningful and easier when you can see what else governs its behavior. In practice, I think seeing the Elisp is much more useful than the C source, but after getting accustomed to jumping to the location of a `def<whatever>', being greeted with the prompt for the C source directory is almost jarring. I remember seeing this prompt when I was first using and exploring Emacs (as provided by my system's package manager) and just giving up. It's not so hard to install sources and tell Emacs about them, as I later discovered, but providing them alongside Emacs (or at least making it simple to do so) makes it that much easier for newbies like myself to see how cool and unique Emacs is. For such a small cost (a few MB on disk) this seems like a great benefit.
- David