Re: git-fetch for emacs-auctex?

[Leo Prikler]

Am Dienstag, den 25.05.2021, 18:42 +0100 schrieb Paul Garlick:
> Hi Guix,
> 
> I recently attempted to reproduce a profile containing emacs-auctex,
> only to find a '404: not found' error.
> 
> The reason is that elpa.gnu.org archives previous auctex versions
> with a .tar.lz extension.   This throws out the Guix package source
> definition, which expects a .tar extension.
> 
> I have considered a few ideas to solve this:
> 
> i) track the last-but-one auctex version in Gnu Elpa.  This way all
> versions would have the same extension.  However, would the url-fetch
> method cope with the .tar.lz format?
Probably yes, but I don't think that being 1 version late out of
principle is a good idea.  Perhaps we can get ELPA to always serve
everything as .tar.lz?  Otherwise let's consider mirrors or SWH.

> ii) use the git-fetch method with the upstream repository.  However,
> the upstream version tag at
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/auctex.git is a smaller number than
> the Gnu Elpa version tag.  This would result in an apparent
> downgrade.  Would that be permissible?
I think we'd have to look at it more closely.  What it this auctex and
how does it differ from the one packaged in ELPA?

> iii) use the git-fetch method to clone the auctex branch of the
> elpa.git repository (along the lines of 'git clone --single-branch --
> branch externals/auctex .../elpa.git).  As far as I can see this is
> not currently possible.
You should be able to point to the commit in question, e.g.
3e163e5d0f2b89a4ad1542b6bd68f8c8fcf3f096.  That said, the ELPA repo
doesn't seem too well annotated :P

Regards,
Leo