Re: Adding packages to ELPA

[Stefan Monnier]

>> So, it's important to be very proactive and to try and get packages into
>> GNU ELPA very early on, when the copyright status is much more simple,
>> so that the copyright assignments can be collected progressively as the
>> contributions get accepted.
> Why not add them to Emacs instead?

Because I find it doesn't scale as well.
- GNU ELPA packages can be released on their own schedule.
- we're not seriously affected by bugs in GNU ELPA packages since they
  can be fixed and released independently.
- the maintainer of `foo' might not like to have to download a 300MB
  repository to hack on her 300-lines package.

> Having them in Emacs will almost immediately contribute to their
> quality, because much more experienced eyes will look over them.

I'd hope that the same holds for elpa packages.  That's why you can type
"make" in `elpa' to compile and prepare all the packages (you just need
to add that directory to your package-directory-list).

I strongly encourage all Emacs contributors/maintainers to have
a checked out tree of `elpa' that they update alongside the `emacs'
repository and to treat it as a "secondary" lisp directory.

> On top of that, we gain more potential contributors to Emacs itself,
> because having write access and a package in the core naturally leads
> to more involvement in core development.

The access rights to `elpa' and to `emacs' are the same already.


        Stefan