[Fedora-packaging] Revised Emacs add-on guidelines

[Jonathan Underwood]

2009/11/8 Jonathan Underwood <jonathan.underwood at gmail.com>:
> 2009/11/7 Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs at math.uh.edu>:
>>>>>>> "JU" == Jonathan Underwood <jonathan.underwood at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> JU> A new draft of the guidelines is here:
>> JU> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/EmacsPackagingRevised
>>
>> These do look significantly simpler, which is generally a good thing.
>> Is there a good way to see the actual diffs between this and the
>> existing guidelines?  Or could you summarize them in a bit more detail?
>>
>
> OK, I did diff the original and revised guidelines, but it's not that
> easily digested, so I'll attempt a summary.
>
> Some of the primary concerns with (x)emacs add on packages are:
> 1) Correct package and sub-package naming and organization
> 2) Installing the files in the right places
> 3) Ensuring that the version of (x)emacs that was used to byte compile
> the elisp files is a requirement of the package - requiring build time
> detection of the (x)emacs version
>
> With the current guidelines, points 2 and 3 were handled by calling
> pkg-config to define macros at add-on package build time. This makes
> use of a pkg-config file installed with the (x)emacs package.
>
> With the revised guidelines we make use of macros in the files
> /etc/rpm/macros.[x]emacs to ensure the relevant macros are defined for
> add-on package building. This removes the pkg-config complexity and
> removes a lot of boilerplate from the spec files.
>
> That's the main point of the guideline update.
>
> At the same time I've reorganised the guidelines for clarity and
> simplicity. I hope they're a lot easier to follow now.

Two extra points:

I should have emphasized that the changes to the guidelines are purely
about mechanism, and not policy. Nothing has changed with regard to
emacs add-on packaging policy in the guidelines.

I should also addd, as a sidenote, that the old pkg-config way of
doing things still works, as we haven't removed the pkg-config files
from the emacs/xemacs packages. So nothing breaks.

J.