Re: Emacs-Guix released outside from Guix

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Alex!

Alex Kost <address@hidden> skribis:

> Hello, I've been working on Emacs interface outside from the Guix repo
> for some time, I mean I'm not going to maintain it inside Guix, sorry :-(
>
> The main reason, is, well, inconvenience for me: I don't like to bother
> people with patches, etc.  I tried to explain it at
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-07/msg01091.html>.

As someone who’s always trusted you to do the right thing, I’m of course
disappointed that we Guix folks didn’t get notified nor consulted before
the fact.  I would also have loved a reply to my message back then¹.
That’s your choice though.

¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-07/msg01110.html

> There are 2 more reasons above that:
>
> - I'd like to make it available on MELPA (people asked about it several
>   times in the past);

This is surprising: I’d expect Guix users to install it with Guix, and
non-Guix users to, well, not care about Guix.

> - Currently, to be able to use it on non-GuixSD system, a user has to
>   install 'guix' package into their profile.  This has never looked good
>   to me (installing a whole guix only for a small part of it). I would
>   prefer to make "guix package -i emacs-guix" possible instead.

OK.

This change will prevent joint feature development (updating
completions, ‘emacs-build-system’ and how it interacts with the Emacs
UI, M-x guix, cross-cutting changes to the UI, and so on).  This isn’t
good news for users.

Breakage will occasionally occur as the Guix APIs change, which will
make us all a bit sad.  What are your thoughts?

> So I'd like to add 'emacs-guix' package (the current patchset) and to
> remove it from the Guix source tree, if you don't mind.

I think “if you don’t mind” is misplaced.

> The code of Emacs-Guix can be found on github¹ or notabug².  I've just
> made a release (v0.2); and I'm going to send a message with the summary
> of changes later.
>
> ¹ https://github.com/alezost/guix.el
> ² https://notabug.org/alezost/emacs-guix
>
> I'm also sending the following patches:
>
> [PATCH 1/2] gnu: Add emacs-bui.
> [PATCH 2/2] gnu: Add emacs-guix.

OK!

I’ll let you take care of the actual removal, along with update to the
Texinfo cross-references and doc/htmlxref.cnf (assuming the manual will
be available on-line.)  I think it would help users to keep
cross-references between the two manuals.

We need to see what Ricardo thinks and whether or not this can be done
before 0.12, which is slated for sometime next week.

Keep up the great Emacs work.  Long live guix.el!

Ludo’.