Re: Core ELPA was: Testing fontification, indentation, and buffer manipulation

[Phillip Lord]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > I think a plain `make` shouldn't perform a `git fetch` every time the
>   > Makefile changes.  It's OK to require a `git fetch` in that case, but
>   > if/when the `git fetch` happens should be under the control of the user
>   > (i.e. should require some explicit step like `make update-elpa`).
>
> I don't think it is right for 'make' to affect the source files people edit,
> except in limited automatic ways.

That's not the case here. The idea is this. You (the user) manually
clones the Emacs repository. When you build it (by default) the Emacs
build process automatically clones the ELPA reposistory and takes the
files that it needs from there.

Doing this will mean that there will some Emacs-Lisp files present in a
built Emacs which are not actually source files in the sense of "the
thing you need to edit", but copies from else where. I need to think
about how to minimize the risk of this.


> There are sometimes reasons to continue building the same checkout --
> perhaps making some local edits -- and excluding all other changes
> that could confuse matters.

My build process simply runs git fetch when it thinks it needs to. Where
the fetch will come from (if anywhere) can be configured where the
developer wants. So, it's still possible to isolate yourself totally
from the main ELPA repo.

Phil