[bug#50077] Separate ‘emacs’ output vs separate ‘emacs-’ package (was Re: [bug#50077] [PATCH 1/3] gnu: notmuch: Add separate 'emacs' output.)

[Carlo Zancanaro]

On Wed, Sep 01 2021, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:
> TL;DR: I'm generally in favor of branching emacs support 
> packages off, even if origins are to be inherited.

This is my preference, and there is precedent for this in Guix 
already. I know of emacs-protobuf-mode and emacs-erlang which are 
separate packages, but which reference the source of an existing 
package (with (package-source protobuf) and (package-source 
erlang), respectively).

I like how easy it is to discover Emacs packages by looking for 
the emacs- prefix. Mu and notmuch already violate that prefix 
expectation, moving their elisp into a separate output would be 
further hiding the Emacs modes.

Carlo