Re: Emacs vista build failures

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:05:16 +0200, David Kastrup <address@hidden> said: 

> Don Armstrong <address@hidden> writes:
>> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, David Kastrup wrote:
>> 
>>> I know of _no_ upstream Emacs or XEmacs developer who claims to
>>> understand or get along with the Debian setup.
>> 
>> There's no need for upstream developers to bother, since it's all
>> handled for them by Debian Developers.

> Uh, upstream developers need to compile and test their work, too.  And
> it is not feasible to, say, arrange your own package in front of the
> load-path somewhere in /usr/local/ since the Debian policy puts .el
> files and .elc files in completely different directory hierarchies
> (and different places in the load-path order), so things tend to get
> mixed up if they are more than once in the load-path.

        Why does that matter for you in /usr/local? You can put all the
 .el and .elc files in the same directory. As an emacs developer, surely
 you can put a path in front of the system load path? I mean, a
 dumb-as-doornails Debian person like me can  manage to add my elisp
 directories ahead of system paths, so surely an intelligent emacs
 developer can do so as well, unless they wanted to appear unable for
 the sake of a debating point.

> As one consequence, the diagnostic tool M-x list-load-path-shadows RET
> pretty much goes crazy on Debian.

        It is:
A. /usr/share/<current-emacs-flavour> hiding /usr/share/emacs
B. /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/<current-emacs-flavour> hiding 
                                   /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/

        Frankly, I don't call that going "pretty much crazy". but it
 does make a nice sound bite in a flamewar.

> The only sane way out is to compile and manage your own Emacs and
> packages.  And that's what _all_ Emacs and XEmacs developers I know
> who are not simultaneously Debian maintainers do.

        I think this is not the case, since a trivial work around is
 available (add your dir to the head of the path).

        manoj
-- 
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going
somewhere. Groucho Marx
Manoj Srivastava <address@hidden> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>  
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