Re: Are there an elisp package manager like apt-get or cpan?

[Tim X]

"Þorne" <ego111@gmail.com> writes:

> chylli wrote:
>> Hi. Are there an emacs lisp package manager like apt-get in debian or
>> cpan in perl ? When I want to install a package, I just run a command,
>> then emacs will find proper package in proper web site and install
>> it.
>
> Funny, i was just thinking of writing one the other day.  I got to
> thinking that it would really be trivial to write something using
> ange-ftp or tramp or whatever.  Something like asdf-install for Emacs.
>
> You could have a function like `esdf-load' that goes and looks up a
> keyword in a known flat-file database on the net consisting of (KEYWORD
> . location) pairs, then grab the source from the location and load it.
> `esdf-find-file' could do the same but just open it in a buffer.  And
> `esdf-install' could grab it, save it to `esdf-install-directory' and
> add (load "foo") to your .emacs (or something a little better).
>
> And it could be called recursively.  So developers who have packages
> using more than one file could have a package definition file that is
> what esdf-install would point to, and that file would just have calls
> to esdf-install for all the files in the package, in whatever order was
> desired.
>
> But the thing is, it is so easy to do this already if you know the
> location of the file that it is hardly necessary.  So the real problem
> is finding someone who wants to keep a database online of such
> information, or even wants to archive the packages themselves as actual
> downloadable, loadable .el files, rather that links to text in html
> files and Usenet postings and such.  There is the Emacs Lisp List, and
> the emacswiki, but the the data tends not to be consistently in the
> form of clean .el files.
>

I think you hit th enail on the head - the real problem is that we
don't have a central, maintained and up-to-date repository of emacs
packages. There have been anumber of emacs lisp archives in the past,
but they all seem to last only as long as the person who initiated the
effort is prepared to maintain things. Once they move on to something
else, it all just dies. 

It would be nice if some body like GNU would setup and maintain a
single comprehensive elisp archive. 

For debian users, a lot can be achieved by taking on the
responsability for packaging and maintaining a deb version - then
apt-get will do what we need.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au