bug#67292: emacs / emacs-transient collisions and bundling

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Sun, 19 Nov 2023 at 23:44, Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> wrote:

> Bug 1: emacs bundles emacs-transient.
> (Likewise for quite a few other Emacs packages.)

This is not a bug.  transient.el is part of Emacs since version 28, see
NEWS:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 28.1

** transient.el
This library implements support for powerful keyboard-driven menus.
Such menus can be used as simple visual command dispatchers.  More
complex menus take advantage of infix arguments, which are somewhat
similar to prefix arguments, but are more flexible and discoverable.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

When an user installs Emacs, they expect to have transient as builtin;
it is not bundled.  I recommend to read the section:

    * New Modes and Packages in Emacs X

in NEWS release files to know which mode or package are included as
builtin.  And yes, these packages are sometimes developed outside the
Emacs tree using a dedicated repository, as transient.el or Org-mode for
instance.


> Bug 2: no collision handling.

This is a bug, IMHO.  Indeed, if an user prefers another version of
builtin modes or packages, they should not collide with the builtin
ones.  Well, they do not collide when using “guix shell”:

    guix shell -C emacs emacs-transient -E TERM -- emacs -q

Therefore, maybe the issue comes from some specific code from “guix
home”.  Hum, I do not know.

Cheers,
simon