Re: cl-defstruct-based package.el, now with ert tests!

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:36:36 +0000 (UTC) Daniel Hackney <address@hidden> wrote: 

DH> Ted Zlatanov <tzz <at> lifelogs.com> writes:
>> Agreed, maybe Daniel can explain why using `tar-mode' was questionable.
>> Performance?

DH> The answer is "it seemed yucky." `tar-mode' was clearly not intended to act 
as
DH> an API for other programs looking to read tar files, so using it as such was
DH> kind of hacky. Using the external "tar" program seems like the cleaner
DH> alternative. Since package.el already uses the external tar program for
DH> `package-tar-file-info', I figured depending on tar for more substantial 
stuff
DH> was fine. If people really don't want to depend on the external program, 
I'll
DH> remove it and just use `tar-mode'.

I'm OK with the change if it doesn't break any existing W32 support.
Otherwise we're leaving many Emacs users unable to use package.el.

`tar-mode' seems pretty OK as far as the data extraction.  So maybe we
just need to pull the data functions out into a utility library?

Either way, I'll wait for this to happen before working on the ELPA
security (signing packages).  So if I can help, let me know.

DH> Is there any way to gunzip the data in a buffer without using an external
DH> program? It would be nice to be able to use tar.gz files.

Sorry, I don't know, but `ldd emacs' says libz is already available at
least on GNU/Linux.  So the C functions should be there.

Ted