Re: Integrating package.el

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:40:11 -0800 Phil Hagelberg <address@hidden> wrote: 

PH> Phil Hagelberg <address@hidden> writes:
>>> Basically, all I want is for it to be able to distinguish between
>>> "packages available locally, either installed by the user or the
>>> sysadmin", and "packages that will be autoloaded in a given session", so
>>> as to be able to install different versions of the same package at the
>>> same time.
>> 
>> OK, I will prioritize this once I finish adding support for multiple
>> archive sources. I think we'll need this in order to support separating
>> out fully-supported packages vs unsupported packages for which we simply
>> have copyright assignment as Ted has suggested.

PH> I've just implemented support for multiple package sources in
PH> package.el. Right now it is preconfigured to use ELPA, but the following
PH> snippet will let it pull in packages from my own archive source as well:

PH> (add-to-list 'package-archives
PH>              '("technomancy" . "http://repo.technomancy.us/emacs/";) t)

PH> Hit M-x package-list-packages to see all available packages. The "bork"
PH> and "bingle" packages are dummies that are only available from my
PH> repository, and should be available for installation at the same time as
PH> the standard ELPA-provided packages.

PH> I'd love to see some other elisp library authors try to set up their own
PH> package archive sources using package-maint.el and test the
PH> multiple-archive support.

PH> I hope that a new version of package.el incorporating my changes could
PH> be pushed out to ELPA and then possibly included in Emacs once a little
PH> more work has gone into integration with the Emacs load process.

Hi Phil,

that's wonderful news.  I was just reading (and commented) at
http://monkey.org/~marius/self-contained-emacs.html about how package.el
with custom repositories could solve a very common need to have a
"personalized" self-contained Emacs.

Have you considered support for non-HTTP sources?  I'm OK with HTTP only
for now but I think a Bazaar source would make sense if there's going to
be a ELPA-style repository inside Emacs itself.  Also are file:/// URLs
supported?

What remains to be done to make package.el a part of Emacs?  I think
Dan Nicolaescu's suggestion about menus makes sense.  Is there anything
else?

Once it's in the core we can start work on making more Emacs packages
installable directly.  Again, I think this is great progress and I
appreciate your work.

Thanks
Ted