Re: Software/HD ecology

[Kai Großjohann]

Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> I  consider  this a  good  phenomenon.   It  is how  evolution  works:
> varieties created  by crossing over and mutation;  the unsuitable ones
> eliminated  by natural  selection.  So,  with time,  the  system would
> evolve to an optimum.

Well, err.  How come I doubt this.  Maybe I can't see the wisdom of
the outcome of a similar process regarding operating systems and one
regarding office software...

If Autoconf would make it easy for people to install an uninstaller,
then a change to the technically better might happen.  But I don't
think that the world is going to standardize on a package format
anytime soon.

-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)
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Subject: Re: customize question
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Ian Zimmerman <itz@speakeasy.org> writes:

> I'd like to reuse a customized variable (which is not autoloaded) from
> another package in my code.  Is there a way to do that other than
> (require 'otherpackage) ?

You could autoload it.

> (In particular, I was thinking of declaring the same variable myself,
> either in my group or in the group of the other package.  What would
> be the effect of that, and can it be depended on?)

Oh, no.  Better don't do that.  I think it's not a good idea to change
the custom spec of a variable.  And if you do, load order determines
who wins.

How about just requiring the package and adding the variable to your
own custom group?  I believe that defgroup allows you to list some
variables which are to be in that group.

-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)
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Subject: Re: Software/HD ecology
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   > Why not just extend automake to support an install-stow target that
   > installs packages in $(prefix)/package/PACKAGE/VERSION by default?

   Because not everyone wants to use stow (or any package manager).

One is not forced to use stow, one can use anything.  But since
autoconf is designed for GNU it should be designed to fit in with
other GNU tools.  You can still for example use the normal install
target todo the traditional thing, or use some other program that
conforms to the install-stow practise.

   Besides, you can configure the 'prefix' to what you're suggesting
   above if you want to use stow, so there is nothing to change in
   automake for it.

Configuring with the prefix variable is discouraged.  For example if a
program is configured to look for files in
$(prefix)/package/foo/0.1/share/foo, and another program installs
files in $(prefix)/package/bar/0.2/share/foo/bar-extra.  Then the
package foo will never find these files since it does not look in
$(prefix)/share/foo (assuming it was stowed to /).  One should
configure with the normal prefix options and then use DESTDIR when
running the install target.  Sadly not all GNU packages support this
since it is not mandated by the GNU Coding standard.

Anyway, isn't this highly off-topic for help-gnu-emacs?