Re: feature/package-vc has been merged

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: philipk@posteo.net,  rms@gnu.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2022 23:43:55 -0500
> 
> >> >> And if you think many do, why not clone the repository directly into
> >> >> ~/.emacs.d/elpa/?
> >> >
> >> > Because that won't take care of scraping for autoloads, byte
> >> > compilation and installing missing dependencies.
> >> 
> >> Also because packages in there are expected to be installed under the
> >> <PKG>-<VERSION> directory, whereas when installing from Git a package
> >> will be updated in place so its version number will keep changing, and
> >> it would be inconvenient to rename its directory every time.
> >
> > Then how about removing that requirement for packages installed
> > directly from their upstream repositories?
> 
> Not sure what would be the benefit.

Simplicity (only one location for installing packages) and solution
for problems that otherwise need non-trivial tinkering.  See the
preceding discussions.

> I personally like the distinction between `~/.emacs.d/elpa` (for
> packages that are installed as "black boxes") and those installed from
> Git which are stored in a "regular" location (i.e. where I keep my
> source code rather than my config).

I fail to recognize a significant advantage of this, and I definitely
don't see how this would justify all the complications we've been
discussing lately here.

> The downside would be increased mutual dependency between the package-vc
> and package-nonvc code.

Why increased?  And why downside?  Emacs infrastructure packages are
inter-dependent anyway, and we never saw that as a significant
disadvantage.