Re: feature/package-vc has been merged

[Philip Kaludercic]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>
>> Cc: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca,  rms@gnu.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2022 15:58:11 +0000
>> 
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> > And symlinks could be problematic on MS-Windows.  Maybe allow to copy
>> > instead.
>> 
>> That I did not know.  The issue with copying is that you loose vc
>> information.
>
> Why do they need VC information inside ~/.emacs.d/ ?

While not strictly necessary, a big part of the motivation of package-vc
is the ability to easily work on packages that are usable as regular
packages.  If I M-x find-function into a ~/.emacs.d/elpa/ and make a few
changes, having to distinguish between packages between packages with
:lisp-dir attributes and those without seems unnatural.

>> When do symlinks create issues under windows?
>
> Creating symlinks requires privileges that not every user has.

Oh, I see.

>> Perhaps there is a better way to solve this issue in general?  I would
>> have to look at how complicated it would be to make package.el load a
>> subdirectory instead of the immediate directory under "elpa".
>
> Yes, that'd be more portable, I think.

It looks like it is doable.  There might be a few tricky edge-cases, but
nothing impossible.