|--==> "VB" == Vaclav Barta <vbar(a)comp.cz&gt; writes: VB> I can say I really don't like it. As far as I can see: VB> 3) these files can be created by anybody who has xemacs, i.e. VB> anybody who could conceivably want to use them SY> Very true. Not everyone would want to though (some may not SY> even know how). There could be problems with requires and SY> macros and such. Big problems. If you look at the package sources, you'll see that many of them explicitly say they do not support building "source packages" of the kind you are requesting. In fact at present building "source packages" is not supported at all; the only way to reliably build from source is to get the CVS tree. VB> So why aren't they created locally!? I bet that the above isn't VB> *quite* true; that there are compilcations I'm not seeing... In fact, Debian GNU/Linux actually does rebuild 3rd party packages (ie, those distributed by someone other than GNU Emacs or XEmacs) for every Emacs installed every time a Lisp package is installed or upgraded. The builds are consistently buggy, and these are simple packages, with few macro definitions or defsubsts, and often only one Lisp library. I don't bother with Debian packages anymore, except as a convenient way to acquire documentation and something that probably (but not always!) works well enough to evaluate for XEmacs packaging. YMMV. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Vaclav Barta muttered drunkenly: It's an automatically generated file that contains autoload definitions for every file in a directory, automatically generated for every definition in that directory's Lisp files that is preceded by the magic cookie ;;;###autoload XEmacs iterates across all the directories under the packages and site-packages lisp directories and loads the auto-autoloads files it finds there. This is far preferable to the old method (inherited from GNU Emacs) of having a single great big file containing all the autoloads for every package dumped into Emacs (generated from magic cookies in the Lisp source in the same way as now) --- that meant that to add an autoload transparently (in the same way as the core Emacs autoloads) you had to redump Emacs. You can regenerate this file (for your site-lisp trees, say) via xemacs -vanilla -batch -f autoload -l batch-update-directory {directory name} There's also an automatically generated `custom-load' file, which contains defgroup entries for every customization group in that directory; you regenerate that via xemacs -vanilla -batch -f cus-dep -l Custom-make-dependencies {directory name} and then you probably want to re-byte-compile them: xemacs -vanilla -batch -f bytecomp -l batch-byte-recompile-directory {directory name} --- question; shouldn't we provide shell scripts that do this for people automatically? (I'd be happy to contribute mine, ugly though they are.) (XEmacs-21.1 *had* some shell scripts to do this, actually, although they weren't installed, but they'd disappeared by 21.4 days.) There's a CVS module called `prog-modes-1_49' (and similarly for all the others) --- but I don't know if you can build just that module without the top level directory (which has the make rules in it and so forth) --- and I'm not sure if you can get the top level directory without getting all the packages at the same time. (Steve?) -- `I personally would not stand in a river waving a graphite rod above my head during a thunderstorm.' --- Harry Jackson

|--==> "VB" == Vaclav Barta <vbar(a)comp.cz&gt; writes: VB> What I want is to minimize downloads (the rest of the world may VB> have moved on, but I still pay for my phone connection by VB> the minute)... Say I want the latest version of prog-modes; VB> how do I get it (and nothing else) from xemacs CVS? cvs -d :pserver:cvs＠cvs.xemacs.org:/pack/xemacscvs login [password is "cvs" (sans quotes) you only need to do this step once] cvs -d :pserver:cvs＠cvs.xemacs.org:/pack/xemacscvs co prog-modes [that gets the prog-modes package, substitute "prog-modes" for other package names to get other packages (eg gnus, xemacs-base)] cvs -d :pserver:cvs＠cvs.xemacs.org:/pack/xemacscvs co package-control [that gets the Makefiles and other build tools you need] Note that you'll also need to check out any packages that 'prog-modes' depends on (mail-lib xemacs-devel xemacs-base cc-mode ps-print fsf-compat edit-utils ediff emerge efs vc speedbar dired) *and* you'll have to check out all of the packages that these depend on and any that they depend on... The easiest answer to being able to build your own packages is to check out all the packages with the "packages" module. I know that you are trying to conserve the amount of time you spend online so maybe you can find some way to get the "packages" module initially through some other means.[1] Once you've got all the packages checked out of CVS you can update with 'cvs update' which will only get anything that's changed since the last time you updated. Footnotes: [1] Perhaps you know someone who is better connected than you that you could take your computer or hard drive to and use their connection? -- |---<Steve Youngs>---------------<GnuPG KeyID: 10D5C9C5>---| | XEmacs - It's not just an editor. | | It's a way of life. | |------------------------------------&lt;youngs(a)xemacs.org&gt;---|