Federated package management [was Recursion problems with package management]

[Rusi]

On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 8:53:39 AM UTC+5:30, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> On 2015-08-14 19:30 -0700, Rusi wrote:
> 
> > tl;dr
> > Emacs package-managing emacs is thhe usual lure of Turing complete language 
> > can 
> > do anything does not mean doing it is appropriate.
> > 
> > If we must use elisp for it, it would be good to have a separate
> > 'binding-time'. Just as in the C world compile time and runtime are
> > rigorously separated, it would be neat IMHO if elisp running in
> > package-mgmt mode did it in batch-mode and required restart of emacs.
> > 
> > Perhaps req-package is in the earlier binding time
> > And use-package the later one?
> 
> **WARNING** **WARNING** **WARNING**
> Major snark mode on!
> 
> The answer is obvious: let distros do what they're supposed to do,
> which is, um, packaging.  Doh!
> 
> Debian, for instance, already has the /etc/emacs/site-start.d directory
> to do load ordering.  Now, there are three things I hear you screaming
> right now:
> 
> 1. The mechanism is hardly used right now, with everthing loading at the
> same level (50).  That's just an opportunity to do much better!
> 
> 2. The mechanism is pathetically weak, with all the problems of SysV
> init on which it seems to be based.  Again, so replace it - but with
> another (better) OS level thing, not with an Emacs thing.
> 
> 3. Clearly we don't want maintainers to do separate packaging work for
> each distro.  So, this is something that needs to be standardized among
> the distros.  They _are_ willing to do that, when there's compelling
> technical case for it.
> 
> In fact, I'm sending links to these threads to Rob Browning (Debian
> Emacs maintainer) right now.

We are talking of something interesting and useful but another thing now
-- federated package management.

[Just trying to keep the threads distinct by subject]

About need for FPM:
Lets say (for discussion not trolling!) that the debian apt system is the
best package mgmt tool.  However it is by definition *downstream* and therefore
behind the cutting/bleeding edge.

Conversely every non-trivial large system has evolved its own package management
subsystem.
egs. Haskell-hackage, Python-Pypy, Ruby-gems, Tex-texmgr, firefox-plugins
Likewise emacs.

Most of these are woefully inadequate compared to apt

So just as ONE package-mgmt system makes no sense unless there are a plurality
of packages, I'd like to suggest that DIFFERENT package management systems would
be more useful if they cooperated rather than competed.

Something along the lines that one should be able to do
(along the lines of git submodule)

# apt-get submodule emacs install magit

and apt-get should chain-out to the emacs package system