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To: XEmacs Beta List <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: Packages: what to do?
References: <kigbu1w9fd4.fsf@jagor.srce.hr> <87pvqbbbez.fsf@bittersweet.inetarena.com> <kighgbmvfd8.fsf@jagor.srce.hr>
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From: Colin Rafferty <craffert@ml.com>
Date: 15 Sep 1997 12:54:19 -0400
In-Reply-To: Hrvoje Niksic's message of "15 Sep 1997 16:08:51 +0200"
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Hrvoje Niksic writes:

> karlheg@inetarena.com (Karl M. Hegbloom) writes:
>> I opened the gnus package by standing in
>> /usr/local/lib/xemacs/packages/, and doing `tar xzf gnus...' on it.

> I cannot do that, as I am not root on the machine.

> What I really want to do is to add a package, as a "normal" user,
> without rebuilding XEmacs.  Is that possible?

Not really.  This is one of the things that needs to be worked out a
little with packages.

Right now, the package-path is ~/.xemacs:/usr/local/lib/xemacs/packages.
This does two things.  

First, at dump-time, every auto-autoload.el(c) in
/usr/local/lib/xemacs/packages is dumped into the XEmacs executable.
Specifically, this happens for every directory on package-path that does
not have a "~" (since that is personal stuff).

Second, at run-time (assuming no change to package-path), every lisp
directory (and subdirectory) of every directory on the package-path gets 
put on the load-path.

The third thing that should happen (in my opinion), but does not happen,
is that any directory on the load-path that has an auto-autoload.el(c)
file that has not been dumped, should be loaded.  This is what you were
expecting, but did not get.

Since I am not root, my solution to the Gnus "problem" is to have
package-path be ~/.xemacs:/export/craffert/src/xemacs.  I install gnus,
footnote, auctex, and bbdb into /export/craffert/src/xemacs, and their
autoloads get dumped (as expected).

I then moved my personal elisp into ~/.xemacs/lisp/personal, so that it
gets put on the load-path automatically.  My ~/.xemacs/init.el (used to
be ~/.emacs) is simpler now.  It used to set up the load-path, and then
load my real init file.  Now it just `require's my real init file.

I would like to be able to drop packages into ~/.xemacs, and have them
autoloaded automatically.  The problem is, when do we load the
auto-autoload files from my ~/.xemacs?  If we were to be fascistic, we
would load the ~/.xemacs/lisp/*/auto-autoload.el files before reading
~/.xemacs/init.  We set up the paths from package-path already, lets do
this as well.

However, once loaded, it is difficult to undo this operation.  Maybe
there should be a way for a user to specify a different package-path.
But if he does, what happens to the pre-dumped stuff?

Anyway, these are some of the issues around packages in general.  I have 
a more fascistic bend, but other people are a little kinder.

- -- 
#!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
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lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

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