Re: ELPA submission: mathjax.el

[James Thomas]

Augusto Stoffel wrote:

>>   > B. If the build environment can run containers, I can include a
>>   > suitable Dockerfile.
>>
>> Container systems in general present the same kind of pitfalls as npm:
>> they put lots of free modules and lots of nonfree modules into a
>> bucket and making sure you don't pull out any of the nonfree ones is
>> your problem.
>
> That's correct.  But note that when your container declaration starts
> with
>
>   FROM docker.io/debian:stable
>
> then you know you're just running on an isolated copy of Debian stable.
> You have access to exactly the same nonfree software you could get in
> the ELPA build system itself (which runs Debian stable).
>
>> I've been told there are important differences between the well-known
>> container systems in this regard, and I don't remember how Docker
>> stacks up.  MAYBE if we consult a Docker expert we will find it can be
>> used safely.  But we had better study this carefully.
>>
>> System distributions include binary packages to speed installation.
>> We can surely package mathjax this way somehow or other.  But we must
>> release sources with a build recipe too.  If we include mathjax
>> somehoe in Emacs, or in GNU in any way, we _must_ include a way to
>> build it from source.  That includes any special tools it needs.
>>
>> If the makefile to compile mathjax uses a container, it had better
>> include the rules to build that container, manually specifying which
>> modules to include in the container.  Somewhere there must be rules to
>> rebuild THOSE modules from source.
>
> I've just mentioned containers as a hypothetical technical solution,
> it's not being considered seriously.

In any case, there seems to be a Guix package for it:

  https://packages.guix.gnu.org/packages/js-mathjax/

So it should be trivial to make a 'free' container out of.

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