Re: Include leaf in Emacs distribution

[Naoya Yamashita]

> Thanks for your work.  FWIW, here are my two cents.
>
> First, the copyright issues with use-package are being worked on, see:
> https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package/issues/282
>
> Once that is worked out, we could include both use-package and leaf in
> Emacs, only one of them, or both.  It is good that we have two packages
> here, since it gives us more options.

Yes I've known that.  You can submit topic after the issue is resolved.

> I have looked at the leaf package before, but I could never figure out
> why I would want to use it instead of use-package.  They are very
> similar, and the functionality seems to be mostly overlapping.  I think
> that we should perhaps consider why we even have two packages here.
> Could the functionality of one be absorbed by the other?  Are the
> differences really that important?  But maybe I'm just missing
> something.
>
> Personally, I'd rather not see two very similar packages in Emacs unless
> there are important differences and sufficiently strong reasons.

It is your choice, Nothing bad.

>From my point of view the syntax of use-package is confusing.
For example, :when is naturally designed to evaluate a given
S-expression and is only enabled when non-nil is returned, but
:disabled is not.  That is, (use-package flymake :disabled t) and
(use-package flymake :disabled nil) will be converted to nil,
respectively.  This is unnatural.  Also, :when can be a free
S-expression, but not :disabled.

Other keyword, :mode and :hook specify a cons cell, but :custom
specifies a list.  This can be confusing for newcomers.

Both issue are solved in my leaf.

> One starting point here is that use-package seems to be more widely used
> and known.  If this is correct, I guess leaf unfortunately has a bit of
> an uphill battle to show some significant improvement over use-package.

As I wrote in another email, use-package was created in 2012 and
has been distributed by MELPA since 2013.  The number and
visibility of users is because of its history and because it's
the first package in this field.  And with that many users, it's
hard to solve these problems because the syntax needs to be
changed.