Re: Autoload from a web page?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Jonas" == Jonas Bernoulli <address@hidden> writes:

Jonas> I do not know what ELPA's position on license issues are.

>From http://tromey.com/elpa/upload.html

    ELPA accepts only free software. If in doubt check the DFSG to see if
    your license qualifies. We encourage all authors to assign their code to
    the FSF and to try to get their new packages into the official Emacs
    release.

Jonas> I favor the model where the package manager does clone the
Jonas> repository from the repository

To me this seems to have several negatives for end users.  It takes more
space and requires them to have some particular version control software
installed.

The ELPA approach does not require anything outside of Emacs.

>> - Download a package part by part as the elisp files are needed (kind
>> of autoloading and installing locally through the web).

Jonas> I do not like this idea at all.
[...]
Jonas> The package manager should only operate on complete packages.

Yeah, I agree.  I couldn't think of when I would ever want to just
install some part of a package.

Jonas> And this is precisely because it uses a dvcs. You simply clone
Jonas> the desired package and from that on you simply have to run "git
Jonas> pull" to bring your local copy up-to-date. You do not have to
Jonas> remember where you got the package.

That is not sufficient.  The user also has to make sure the dependencies
are correct, and has to re-byte-compile the files.

Tom