Re: emacs packaging (emacs-popup)

[Alex Kost]

Federico Beffa (2016-02-16 10:58 +0300) wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 5:46 PM, Alex Kost <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Federico Beffa (2016-02-15 15:12 +0300) wrote:
[...]
>>> I would suggest to move the README.md (and in general documentation
>>> related files) to $datadir/doc/package-name-version/. Info files to
>>> $datadir/info/package-name-version/. Take a look at 'emacs-slime'.
>>>
>>> Remove unused files like .gitignore, ...
>>
>> I don't agree.  This is not done for any other emacs package.  I think
>> ".gitignore" and other files should not be removed in a package recipe.
>> This is a job for emacs-build-system, and I thought it was agreed¹.  So
>> I think this "emacs-popup" package can be left as it is now, and once
>> our emacs-build-system will be improved (to remove useless file, to move
>> README into share/doc, etc.), it will be fixed automatically.
>>
>> ¹ http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-07/msg00416.html
>
> Doing so will break some packages. One example is 'emacs-slime' which
> includes .lisp and .asd files, other ones are 'emacs-auctex' and
> 'emacs-ob-ipython', ...

For such packages, a potential "cleanup" phase may be removed in a
package recipe.  Also I don't think that .lisp, .asd and other files
should be placed in ".../share/emacs/site-lisp/" directory.  My
understanding is that this directory (and it's subdirs) should be used
only for elisp files.

> While we could add a phase to remove some pretty common and useless
> files such as .gitignore, in general things are not standardized and
> more complex. Unless upstream fixes this situation it will be
> impossible to make a perfect 'emacs-build-system'.

I think that most packages are simple and very similar, and "cleanup"
phase can just remove everything except *.el[c].  For the complex
packages, this phases can be removed, besides it's likely that the
manual intervention in a package recipe will be required anyway.

Anyway, I'm just talking.  Someday (I hope) I will propose patches for
improving emacs-build-system (as I see it).

-- 
Alex