Package systems [LWN.net]

Package systems

Posted Feb 26, 2008 15:04 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: Emacs news: new maintainer, version 22 pretest by nix
Parent article: Emacs news: new maintainer, version 22 pretest

Richard Stallman has strongly opposed the integration of a package system into emacs, on the grounds that distributors could set it up to include non-free packages. It would be nice if that policy could change under the new maintainers, but it seems unlikely. Mr. Stallman most likely retains veto power over changes like that.

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Package systems

Posted Feb 28, 2008 16:51 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

But, um, distributors could equally well set up anything else in their distribution to do
that.

The problem here is that it turns your life into a hell of tracking lots of elisp packages by
hand, or waiting roughly eighty million years for integration into GNU Emacs proper (which
generally damages it as an external package as well thanks to RMS's apparent dislike of e.g.
version numbers or decent documentation for internal functions).

For me, life is way too short to do that.