What do you expect from a package manager for Emacs? [closed]

Answer 1

I think the hackers for the iPhone got quite close to what I want, as does Ubuntu's "apt".

I like to be able to:

• add
• remove (package only)
• remove user settings
• view documentation
• upgrade ( after reading the change log)
• add new archive ( aka add repository )
• see dependencies
• see version
• search for name, keyword
• browse by (date added, date modified, name)
• save all installed packages & settings
• load set of packages & settings

I would like a main set of things that all work nicely and are the recommended way of doing whatever. Then a global set where everything working gets in. Then the ability for anyone to host their own archive.

It would be nice if this was all tied into git/svn/whatever so that you could install old versions. Make your own patches by forking off etc etc etc....

Answer 2

Automatic publishing from version control

I'd love to see a standard, central, and single Emacs package manager. Right now, I'd put my money on ELPA, but there is still a long way to go.

The biggest thing that would help an Emacs package manager would be to make it super trivial to publish packages. In my opinion, I'd like to see this happen in combination with a version control system like git on a central hosted platform like GitHub -- something that would make it easy for authors to publish their packages and would make it easy for others to contribute back.

Similar to how GitHub (used to) make it easy to publish RubyGems, I'd like to see something similar in an Emacs package manager. For example, tag your repository with "vX.Y.Z" and have your elisp goodness automatically available to all.

The added benefit of using a popular backend like GitHub is that you'd immediately get a lot of exposure which should help drive its success.

Answer 3

No matter how this is done, the most important thing in my opinion is that it should be trivial to submit packages to the repository. At the same time, we do not want those packages to be instantly available, to guard against malicious code(and due to licensing issues). Unless there is a "trust" system in place, based on crypto signatures.

Also useful:

• "metapackages", to install several packages at once.
• In the same way, we should be able to install a set of elisp files, for maintainability
• "Broken" packages should not be allowed to disrupt Emacs startup. This is easy and I have it implemented in my own .emacs
• Ability to install files other than scripts. This is often overlooked, but very useful. You'd be able to, for instance, ship images, for icons, toolbars, etc.
• Versioning:package X requires package Y > 1.0
• Testing: perform basic sanity checks, testing for conflicts (keybindings, function redefinitions, functions that are expected to be present but aren't, etc).
• BUG TRACKING: I can't stress the importance of this enough. Having a centralized place to report package bugs (and being able to track them) is extremely important to assure the quality of the packages.

Some sort of compressed archive seems to be best to do some of the above.

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So far, a much improved ELPA seems the way to go.

Answer 4

What I expect most is that everything useful is on it, and works well. This requires you (or a team of maintainers) to aggressively pursue packaging everything for it, and doing whatever that involves — emailing every author of a useful package, and so on.

For instance, the reason Debian (and its derivatives: Ubuntu etc.) is so good is that you can happily use your system without ever having to install something outside the repositories, and that everything on it is thoroughly tested. The actual features of the package manager are important, but secondary to the managed packages themselves.

Answer 5

Easy configuration synchronization: I, like many people, use Emacs on many different computers and servers, some of them my own and some not. It would be amazing if the package manager had some sort of file which I could transfer from one computer to another; then, on the latter computer, the package manager would bring my Emacs into the state I like it in -- all the packages installed and configurations set. Combined with the ability to be able to easily install either site-wide (if one has root permissions) or as a single user, I could synchronize all of Emacsen everywhere.

Answer 6

I once spent some time writing a small package manager for Emacs.

http://gmarceau.qc.ca/plugin.el

I wrote:

Plugin is my attempt at creating a package manager for Emacs. Plugin will automatically downloads Emacs extensions, unpacks them in a directory, adds that directory to the load-path, generates auto-load annotations, and modify your dot-emacs file. The auto-load annotations are a little-known feature of Emacs. Once they are generated, Emacs extensions load quickly and incrementally, which is really nice if you have as many extensions installed as I do.

You will need two library files to get it to run, loop-constructs.el and record.el