Re: Package format/management ramblingss

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

       A package is _only_ allowed to put files in /packages/PACKAGE.
       It is a package after all.

   My idea is that you can unpack a package tarball anywhere you like.

I was unclear.  What I meant was that a package is only allowed to put
files inside of the directory /packages/PACKAGE; where /packages can
be anything.  I.e. if you extract a package you will end up with one
directory, that will contain _all_ files that belong to the package.

       No package will put files in /share/emacs, that directory is a
       virtual one.  /share/emacs would be the union of
       /packages/*/share/emacs.

   I don't think this makes sense.  We don't want to produce
   /share/emacs in this way.

Agreed, but for the user the directory /share/emacs would contain what
is in /package/*/emacs.  So infact, /share is a union of
/package/*/share/emacs.  As to how it should be produced, thats a
different story.

   But I think the right solution is not to use /share/emacs at all.
   All the files that might have gone in /share/emacs should be in
   /packages/emacs-20/etc, /packages/emacs-20/lisp, and so on.

I don't know if this is a typo, sure looks like it... But are you
suggesting the removal of $(datadir) (i.e. share/)? And moving all its
content up one level in the directory tree?

   When Emacs starts, it will be able to open names like
   /dev/mydata/etc, /dev/mydata/lisp, to get at those directories.

I like this alot.