Comment 15 for bug 612222

From: Jonathan Underwood <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: [Vm] [Bug 612222] Re: Wishlist: Install NEWS in builds
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:00:36 -0000

> On 11 August 2010 14:38, Uday Reddy <email address hidden> wrote:
>> Uday S Reddy writes:
>>
>>> There were also the documentations of other non-gnu packages in
>>> /usr/share/doc, such as AucTeX, psgml etc.  So, it looks like gnu and
>>> non-gnu packages are treated differently.
>>
>> Our CentOS installation has a directory /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp,
>> and the various packages like Emacsspeak, AucTeX and psgml use this
>> for everything, including images, data, documentation etc.
>>
>> Does anybody else use this structure?
>
> This is the structure we use for emacs add-on packages for Fedora etc
> simply because that's how things have been for a long time, and this
> is simply because upstream emacs only creates
> /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp by default, and hasn't given any
> consideration to how packages should structure themselves. Over time,
> packages have become more complex, adding images etc as well as lisp.
> To reiterate: this situation (i.e. dumping everything under site-lisp)
> is sub-optimal, and needs reconsidering. But it needs to be done in
> consultation with upstream emacs devs, so that it becomes a standard
> adopted by all add-on packages, not just something VM decides upon.
> And it needs to be standardized across distributions too. FWIW, xemacs
> has a much better structure for packages:
>

I agree.

My suggestion is to hold off on making a decision here until after I've talked
to the elpa guys to find out what their plans are and whether we can make VM
elpa compatible. I'm hoping that ELPA can be the instrument that might get some
package stnadards for emacs add-ons.

Tim