I think the number one question we need to address is whether we want
to support running Xemacs and GNU emacs at the *same* time.
If we do not, it becomes more difficult for users to test out the
other, but it becomes much easier to maintain the emacs setup. I do
not believe that one can sensibly in the longer *use* both, though
people maintaining stuff for both versions obviously will have the
need to test it on both.
If we do, there is probably no way around having the .el files in one
directory and compile .elc files to another emacs variant specific
directory. But again, this does not need to be that complicated. One
could install the .el files in the standard shared directory
(/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp being my favourite, since this is the
default location) and then hack the bytecompiler to generate .elc
files into a subdirectory (say `.emacs-elc' and `.xemacs-elc') and
finally hack the loader to try the subdirectories first. Don't forget:
this is emacs, the extensible editor :-)
Separate packages such as auctex or cvs, which needs to install elisp
files, definitely should have one and only one central location to
stuff things into.
Some of these packages would not need to be compiled ever. Others
would come as .el only and expect to recompile in postinst, and yet
other packages comes compiled in one variant and then need to check
whether the other is installed, and then would hve to recompile with
that (this of course being delegated to the `install-elisp'
script.
Requiring all packages to come compiled with both variants is NOT the
way to go. It will waste diskspace, both on users and for the
maintainers of packages containing elisp, that now *has* to have both
variants installed.
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Christian Lynbech | Computer Science Department, University of Aarhus
Office: R0.32 | Ny Munkegade, Building 540, DK-8000 Aarhus C
Phone: +45 8942 3218 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- www.daimi.aau.dk/~lynbech
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Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael A. Petonic)
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