Re: Elpa installation fails and general confusion

[Stephen Leake]

salotz <salotz@salotz.info> writes:

> I should have mentioned before but I get these Errors/Warnings when I
> `package-install wisi` from elpa:
>
> ```
>
> wisi-parse-common.el:404:1:Warning: the function ‘cl-defstruct’ might
> not be
>     defined at runtime.

this indicates you have an incompatible version of 'cl-lib'.

'M-x locate-library cl-lib' should return
<emacs>/lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-lib.elc.

You might have the ELPA package 'cl-lib' installed; that's a
compatibility package for older emacs; uninstall it.

> As for the general confusion topics:
> ------------------------------------
>
>
>> They are documented, in the Install section of the ada-mode manual,
>> which is mentioned in README.
>> 
>> Where did you look for this documentation? What can we do to make it
>> more likely that you would have found it?
>
> I think its due to there being multiple documentation sites. I was
> looking here for instructions:
>
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/ada-mode.html#Installation

ah. That is out of date. I'm not clear how to get that fixed, but I need
to find out.

> As opposed to your official docs:
> http://www.nongnu.org/ada-mode/ada-mode.html#Ada-executables

More importantly, the ada-mode.info installed in
~/.emacs.d/elpa/ada-mode-7.1.4., and accessible in emacs via C-h i.

> The hyperlink for that is `ada-mode.html`, this should be
> "Documentation". If there is derelict docs on the web, you should
> mention that and say stay away and put the hyperlink to it. Explain
> that ada-mode has not been distributed with emacs since v??. When I was
> looking at all this I just started to get the feeling that I couldn't
> believe any of it, I didn't know what was true and what was not.

I understand.

> This is a bigger issue but it ties into this. There are
> a lot of steps to installing this major mode. I think too many,
> especially for someone that is getting into Ada for the first time.

Yes, I had not considered new users much.

I'm leaning towards providing executable downloads on the savannah
downloads page, one for Linux, one for Windows, and adding some elisp
that downloads them autmatically, after asking permission. That will
make things more transparent.

> I realized they are redundant since elpa install should work, but my
> logic is that if elpa is broken (for reasons specific to elpa such as
> the recipe etc.) I can always write a script to install manually from
> those tarballs. For example, I thought maybe that the 7.1.4 release
> on ELPA was in some error and that I should be using 7.1.3 since that
> is what is on the main page. But you can't install old versions with
> package-install (ugh).

A better source for old versions is the package page in ELPA:

https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/ada-mode.html

scroll down to the old versions list. Those are available for all
packages, and can be installed by package-install.

> ```
> To clone the git repository, use "git clone -b org.emacs.ada-mode";
> otherwise git uses the non-existent branch "master". After cloning that
> branch, run git_checkout.sh to checkout wisitoken, sal, etc.
> ```
>
> I thought this was for development. 

Yes, that's correct.

> I thought projects distribute archives without the expectation that a
> target will have git installed (or knowledge of git). 

that's true

> Especially when the tarballs are also advertised. I guess another part
> of installation instructions would be how to do from the source
> archives. I failed at this because I didn't have SAL and other
> dependencies and its confusing because for ELPA install these come
> along somehow. Ie. there isn't a mapping of wisi tarball -> elpa wisi
> package and ada-mode tarball -> elpa ada-mode package.

Right. the development of ada-mode and wisi started before ELPA, so it's
not simple to go from ada-mode git to installed ELPA packages.

> Sorry this is such a long post about boring things, but hopefully the
> perspective helps.

thanks for taking the time to provide feedback.

-- 
-- Stephe