Re: XEmacs 21.0-b49/pre6 "Belgian Fawn" is released

sb> Um, it appears I've screwed up package-get-base.el in both 21.2-b1 and sb> this release. Could someone please propose some code to deal with sb> this file coming from ftp.xemacs.org? The whole XEmacs community will sb> love you if you do. This is one of the things i've been puzzling over for a couple days now. Ideally, you'd like to have a use packages, but it you get wrapped up in the chicken & egg problem because it has to somehow include itself in the finished product. hmm, just had an idea. How about this scenario. 1) generate package-get-base.el as usual, but also make a package out of it. Actually, I'd put all the package stuff in it. I suspect a lot of the package issues will be raised up in priority once 21.0 comes out and it'll be a lot easier if we have a package package. 2) create a secondary .el file, mmm, something like package-get-base-addendum.el. This file would have the package info for the package that package-get-base.el & co are in. 3) Now the trick is to get this addendum file to the user. A couple ideas pop to mind. *) just have a package-get-addendum function which grabs if via ftp. This file will be less than 512 bytes, so we don't lose much by just grabbing it regardless of version. *) you could also have similar functions that could grab it out of an email or via http 4) This file would also have a bit a lisp code around it such that when package-get-base-addendum gets it, it also loads it. This would set package-get-base to basically just the info for new (or current) package stuff. 5) Package-get-base-addendum, could then do a package-get on this package stuff package and load package-get-base. 6) At this point, package updates would proceed as normal. I've done a meager amount of testing and it looks like this could work. i built a test package-tools package and generated a test package-get-base-addendum.el I put these in the anon ftp area on my pc . i hacked package-get to just pull package-get-addendum and do the loading. I think it just might work in the real world. here is the first stab at package-get-addendum (defun package-get-base-addendum () "Testing Testing Testing!" (interactive) (let* ((found nil) (search-dirs package-get-remote) (filename "package-get-base-addendum.el")) ;; Find the package from search list in package-get-remote ;; and copy it into the staging directory. Then validate ;; the checksum. Finally, install the package. (while (and search-dirs (not (file-exists-p (package-get-staging-dir filename)))) (if (file-exists-p (package-get-remote-filename (car search-dirs) filename)) (copy-file (package-get-remote-filename (car search-dirs) filename) (package-get-staging-dir filename)) (setq search-dirs (cdr search-dirs)) )) (if (not (file-exists-p (package-get-staging-dir filename))) (error "Unable to find file %s" filename)) (message "Retrieved package %s" filename) (sit-for 0) ;; now grab the addendum file & eval it ;; This gives us the latest package-get-base info (load-file (package-get-staging-dir filename)) (setq found t) (if (and found package-get-remove-copy) (delete-file (package-get-staging-dir filename))) ) (package-get 'package-tools nil) (load "package-get-base") ) my test package-get-base-addendum.el. yes, I just modified the ldap entry enough to get it to work. :-) (setq package-get-base '((package-tools (standards-version 1.0 version "1.04" author-version "1.04" date "1998-06-30" build-date "1998-06-30" maintainer "Oscar Figueiredo <Oscar.Figueiredo(a)epfl.ch&gt;&quot; distribution stable priority low category "comm" dump nil description "Emacs Unified Directory Client (LDAP, PH)." filename "package-tools-1.04-pkg.tar.gz" md5sum "6c4deffdd01be3b397fb71a5e5544894" size 37313 provides (package-get package-info packages package-get-base) requires () type regular )) )) my package-tools pkg was basically just all the package* stuff in our included lisp dir. Which brings me to my other point. I'd would recommend we have a directory called bootstrap in our xemacs-21.0 source dir. Bootstrap would contain a current version of the package-tools, efs, and xemacs-base packages. (these are all that's required right?). These packages could either be installed with the make install target. I really think we need to include this capability, otherwise we will be getting royally flamed by the normal, everyday user who doesn't have any idea what packages our about. If even some of our beta testers continue to have problems, I don't think we can expect more out of someone who just wants a working editor. Now to see if you love me or hate me. :-D jeff