Re: Drop tarball releases and go ELPA only

[Arash Esbati]

Hi Tassilo,

Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org> writes:

> "Dr. Werner Fink" <werner@suse.de> writes:
>
>> Hmmm, I'm a bit old fashion ... for me the question rises how to get a
>> system wide automatically updating installation for a multi user
>> workstation from an ELPA channel?
>
> See (info "(emacs) Package Files"):
>
>    In addition to ‘package-user-dir’, Emacs looks for installed packages
> in the directories listed in ‘package-directory-list’.  These
> directories are meant for system administrators to make Emacs packages
> available system-wide; Emacs itself never installs packages there.  The
> package subdirectories for ‘package-directory-list’ are laid out in the
> same way as in ‘package-user-dir’.

What does the above mean in practical terms?  I don't see how one can
say: Emacs, please install this auctex-from-elpa.tar under
`package-directory-list'.  So a downstream distro manager has to install
AUCTeX from ELPA locally, and then repack that installation and
distribute it for pure unpacking in `package-directory-list'?  Or am I
missing something?

Best, Arash