Re: gnu.org-hosted external repositories for GNU ELPA packages?

[Phil Sainty]

Hi Stefan,

I guess my question is really just: Can I register each of my Emacs
packages as a git repository at savannah.gnu.org?

I do understand that all of GNU ELPA is built from the main repository,
but I wouldn't expect to get access to push arbitrary changes to that
repository, so my understanding is that in order to have changes
pushed I would need to send them to this list -- which is absolutely
fine for stable releases, but pointlessly noisy for work-in-progress
commits.

So I'm looking to have external repositories where pre-release versions
can be developed, with stable versions being merged to the GNU ELPA
repository when ready.

Savannah sounds like the right option, but I've never used it before,
so I was hoping for confirmation that it's a valid option.


> GNU ELPA's packages are prepared from the elpa.git repository (among
> other reasons, so as to make sure every code distributed was installed
> by people who have commit access and signed paperwork).

I have signed paperwork for Emacs contributions. If contributing to
GNU ELPA means I get commit access to the main repository, I can deal
with that. It would just be surprising to me (and not my preferred
option), but if that's actually how it works, then that's ok.


-Phil



On 04/06/16 09:54, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > My preference would be to maintain them as external git repositories
> > so that I can push work-in-progress without bothering the emacs-devel
> > list, and only notify emacs-devel once I was happy for a new version
> > to be looked at.
>
> GNU ELPA's packages are prepared from the elpa.git repository (among
> other reasons, so as to make sure every code distributed was installed
> by people who have commit access and signed paperwork).
>
> So elpa.git needs to have a copy of the repository.  The canonical
> repository can be elsewhere (and you just need to "push" to elpa.git
> in order to release a new version).
>
> Note that other people may still install changes in the elpa.git copy
> (you should then get an automatic email message with that change).
>
>
>          Stefan