[Debichem-devel] Proposed new requirements for emacsen add-on packages

[Rob Browning]

Recently I've been fixing some non-trivial problems I introduced in
emacsen-common 2.0.0 -- and to finish fixing them it looks like it may
be best to change (and augment) some of the add-on package requirements.

Originally, I'd really tried to make it so that as of emacsen-common
2.*, add-on packages didn't have to depend on *anything*, but that's
proving difficult to unworkable, so I'm leaning toward adding a
requirement that add-on packages depend on "emacsen-common >= 2.0.8".

If it helps, emacsen-common is only about 140k installed.

Here's what I have so far from the hypothetical 2.0.8 changelog:

    Require add-on packages to depend on emacsen-common >= 2.0.8.
    
    This should be simpler and safer, and emacsen-common is only ~140k,
    which shouldn't be too big a burden.  One specific problem this solves
    is the handling of /var/lib/emacsen-common -- in particular
    /var/lib/emacsen-common/state/package/installed/* if/when
    emacsen-common is purged.  Without the dependency, emacsen-common
    can't remove the tree without clobbering the state for every add-on,
    but if emacsen-common can't remove it, who can?
    
    It seems better to add this requirement for now (which should also
    simplify the emacsen infrastructure in general), than to have every
    add-on try to decide when it's safe to remove
    /var/lib/emacsen-common/state/package (i.e. when they're the last
    add-on being removed from the system).
    
    This release changes the following requirements for add-on packages
    (see debian-emacs-policy for the details):
    
      - They must now depend on emacsen-common >= 2.0.8.
      - They don't need to conflict with emacsen-common anymore.
      - They don't need to guard their calls to emacs-install-package.
      - They don't need to guard their calls to emacs-remove-package.
      - They should no longer manage their package/installed/ file directly.
    
    In addition emacsen flavor packages should now depend on
    emacsen-common >= 2.0.8.

Thoughts?  Strong objections?

(And for whatever it's worth, I've been posting some relevant bits to
 debian-emacsen at lists.debian.org lately, but I imagined that many/most
 of you aren't subscribed.)

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
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