Re: Drop tarball releases and go ELPA only

[Arash Esbati]

Hi Keita,

Ikumi Keita <ikumi@ikumi.que.jp> writes:

> Do you think the v14 change should remain in changes.texi? Or we should
> delete changes.texi itself after changes<v14 are transferred into
> history.texi?

I recommend the latter: Delete the couple of v14 changes we have, move
the entire chapter into history.texi and delete changes.texi.

> Hmm, maybe we should further improve the settings.

This is always asking for trouble ;-)

> According to `use-package' documentation, (use-package foo) `require's
> foo.el at that time. Thus it is expected that the library foo.el is
> loaded at emacs startup and available immediately when the user tries
> to use its functionality.  When certain keyword(s) is given,
> `use-package' defers the `require'.  For example, (use-package foo
> :defer t ...)  In this case, the library foo.el is loaded by autoload
> and it takes small amount of time when its functionalilty is requested
> by the user the first time.
>
> Currently, AUCTeX doesn't conform to this expectation of `use-package'.
> Both
> (use-package auctex)
> and
> (use-package auctex
>   :defer t)
> do the same thing because auctex.el contains nothing meaningful for ELPA
> installation.

True, this is because of this in tex-site.el:

;;; Ensure that loading the autoloads file also loads this file.
;;;###autoload (require 'tex-site)

> (On contrary, the former recommended form (use-package tex :ensure
> auctex) loads the main AUCTeX library tex.el at startup.)

Actually, I never liked this since it loads tex.el at startup for no
reason (at least not that I'm aware of).  So I was hoping we can get rid
of that old recommendation.

> Does this count as a matter we should sort out? If so, I suppose we
> should add
> (require 'tex)
> in auctex.el.

Why should we load that huge file at startup?  Am I missing something?

> (Speaking of revising auctex.el, I think we should now delete this
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> (autoload 'TeX-load-hack
>   (expand-file-name "tex-site.el"
>                     (file-name-directory load-file-name)))
> (TeX-load-hack)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> from auctex.el anyway. If I understand correctly, this is only necessary
> for configure&make installation.)

We could replace that with the FIXME added by Stefan M.:

(require 'tex-site
         (expand-file-name "tex-site.el"
                           (file-name-directory load-file-name)))

which is probably redundant: The feature tex-site is t when use-package
loads auctex.el and the form does nothing, but it is still much less
heavy than loading tex.el.  And we still need auctex.el for bumping the
version number for releases.  And finally, we can tell people to do

(use-package auctex ...)

for their configuration and pretend that AUCTeX is a good use-package
citizen.  Does this make sense?

Best, Arash