Mark Eichin writes ("Re: Emacs per-package startup files"):
...
> [it would make it easier to fix the
> /etc/passwd problem that mhpower mentioned], but in those cases we
> can't really change the "database" because of existing use, whereas
> with emacs we are free to do that.)
Right, that was my line of thought exactly.
...
> Hmm. As for dpkg needing install-elisp, I'm not quite sure I buy that,
> because it would seem to argue that *any* install-* should be included
> in dpkg. Then again, there is only install-info which *is* in dpkg,
> and install-mime which is in mime-support which has it's own
> justification. There aren't any others...
If anyone writes others I'll be happy to include them in dpkg,
provided that they're GPL'd.
...
> So, do these files go in /var/lib/emacs, /etc/emacs, or
> /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp, and why? I can set it up and send changes
> to the emacs package maintainers this weekend if that gets worked
> out...
It needs to be in /etc, and the files must be conffiles, so that
sysadmins can edit them and so forth.
I suggested /etc/emacs/site-start.d because we already have one Emacs
/etc file and /etc is already full of stuff.
> I guess the only thing unresolved is what directory to use, and what
> the little bit of elisp should look like that scans the directory.
How about making /usr/lib/emacs/site-start.el a file rather than a
symlink, and having it load /etc/emacs/site-start.el and run
/etc/emacs/site-start.d.
> I'll look at the text explaining rc.d numbering to see what makes
> sense for that. (I guess in theory we need the ordering, but in
> practice, with autoload, do we need ordering here at all? certainly
> none of the existing packages need it. But I suppose picking an order
> at least makes debugging easier...)
If you just sort the filenames before you run them you'll get the
ordering for free, and if we say that people who don't know what
number to use or don't think they have ordering constraints use 50
then if we do decide we want something loaded early we can do it.
Ian.
