Re: feature/package+vc 04c4c578c7 3/4: Allow for packages to be installed directly from VCS

[Philip Kaludercic]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Philip Kaludercic [2022-10-24 15:35:42] wrote:
>> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>>>> One thing I recently noticed are :url entries of the form
>>>>     "bzr::https://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/org-edna-el";
>>>>
>>>> or
>>>>
>>>>     "hg::https://hg.savannah.nongnu.org/hgweb/enwc/";
>>>>
>>>> How are these handled?  I couldn't find anything specific to this in
>>>> elpa-admin.el.  Is this a Git feature?
>>>
>>> Yes, it's a Git feature.  Git will use the `git-remote-FOO` extension to
>>> access those repositories.  In my experience it tends not to work super
>>> reliably and those extensions aren't installed in `elpa.gnu.org` so we
>>> don't auto-update from those repositories.
>>
>> That also means that these repositories should either be filtered out
>> from elpa-packages.eld or the format should indicate that VC backend is used.
>
> The current format will work for those users who have the corresponding
> `git-remote-<BACKEND>` adapter installed, but yes I guess we need to
> refine a bit what we mean by a "URL".  Currently it's actually not
> really a URL but the "name" of a Git repository, tho it happens to look
> very much like a URL.
>
> Maybe we could use something like
>
>     `:url (hg "https://hg.savannah.nongnu.org/hgweb/enwc/";)`

Looks fine in principle, Would this only apply to non-Git repositories
that just happen to look like a URL?