Re: windows installer

[Phillip Lord]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
>> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 15:46:09 -0500
>> 
>> > They _will_ want to add it to PATH if they want to install packages
>> > from the likes of ELPA, which frequently come with Makefiles that
>> > invoke Emacs to compile the Lisp files.
>> 
>> For lack of familiarity with the Windows world, I don't know if typical
>> Windows users will want to add it to PATH (as a GNU/Linux user, of
>> course I'd do that), but I think the "frequently" above is incorrect.
>> 
>> The way Elisp files are compiled by package.el is to do it in the
>> running Emacs rather than by executing a separate Emacs session, AFAIK.
>> 
>> And even if you configure it to use something like async.el, doesn't
>> (expand-file-name invocation-name invocation-directory) let async.el find
>> an Emacs executable even when it's not in PATH?
>
> Maybe I'm missing something.  29 packages (out of 166) in ELPA have a
> Makefile.  Taking just one random Makefile, company/Makefile, I see
> this:
>
>   EMACS=emacs
>   [...]
>
>   compile:
>         ${EMACS} -Q --batch -L . -f batch-byte-compile company.el company-*.el
>
> If this Makefile is invoked with "make compile", it clearly expects
> Emacs to be found along PATH.  And even if Make is invoked from Emacs,
> the directory where the Emacs binary was found is not added to PATH.
> So how can this work without Emacs's binary being on PATH?  And what
> am I missing here?

This is just not a function of ELPA, it's a function of the ELPA source.

Phil