Re: Integrating package.el

[Phil Hagelberg]

Chong Yidong <address@hidden> writes:

>>> I am worried that this will lead to a problem.
>>> Namely, there may be increasing numbers of packages
>>> that we can't get adequate papers for and can't put into Emacs.
>>
>> This is a problem as opposed to increasing numbers of packages that
>> are available only to their authors and you can't put into Emacs?  At
>> least this way you'll have a contact address for authors.
>
> No, it's a valid concern.  It's hard work hunting down papers and
> integrating packages.  We must make sure a package system does not tempt
> us to just "dump and forget".

Can you explain what you mean by this? Are you saying Emacs perhaps
should not have a package manager, or just that we need to be careful
about what packages we allow into the repository?

I'm going to continue my work on package.el whether or not it is
accepted into Emacs, but it would be a shame to make users go through
extra installation steps to use it.

If package.el is included, I will make every effort to assign copyright
for the projects I maintain for which I can, but there are some for
which it simply won't be possible due to my accepting patches by email
and then losing some of my old email archives in a hard drive crash. I
would hate for this situation to impede adding useful features to Emacs.

-Phil