Re: Progress on merging use-package?

[Philip Kaludercic]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: chad <yandros@gmail.com>
>> Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 18:57:26 -0400
>> Cc: Payas Relekar <relekarpayas@gmail.com>, John Wiegley 
>> <jwiegley@gmail.com>, 
>>      Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>
>> 
>> Eli & Lars, as a point of clarification: what would you want to see in terms 
>> of integration into core for
>> use-package to make the late-November cut for emacs 29.1? 
>> 
>> My understanding is that the copyright concerns are cleared, but John 
>> (Weigley, for anyone looking at this
>> later) believes that some documentation work needs to be done. He doesn't 
>> have time to do it himself, but
>> there do seem to be some potential volunteers (tentatively including myself).
>> 
>> I expect that _eventually_ relatively deep documentation changes would be 
>> wanted if it were included in core
>> (both to use-package and to emacs's existing documentation), but that it 
>> might be ok to include the package
>> (with correct documentation) in 29.1 without necessarily pushing it 
>> throughout all of emacs' own
>> documentation. Does that sound reasonable?
>
> I have difficulty answering these questions.  I think we should hear
> from John first, because he knows best what has to be done.

I believe that Payas (<877d1scgyv.fsf@gmail.com>) gave a good summary of
what is to be done:

    1. Get use-package in ELPA
       Philip already has a patch ready to be reviewed
    2. Complete all documentation
       Not sure what it means to 'complete', but I'll go through it, try
       to make it in more tutorial-esque.
    3. Prepare documentation in texinfo
       Will cross that bridge when 2 is done.
    4. Add all relevant files to emacs.git
       TBD when 3 is done.
    5. Ensure everything loads properly
       TBD when 4 is done. This part will probably need testing from wider
       community, but its out enough in the future that I don't want to
       think about it right now.

Step 1 has already been prepared, as Stefan has pushed a (disabled)
package specification that can be enabled whenever it is decided to do
so.

As to step 2, I don't use use-package myself so it is difficult for me
to say what is missing in the documentation, but apparently there are
unfinished sections that need writing.

Step 3 should be pretty easy, especially since the use-package
repository already contains an auto-generated file that has to be
cleaned up since the automatic translation from .org to .texi is known
to be less than perfect (see <87o7v37sqh.fsf@posteo.net>).

> Having a separate manual for use-package is fine if this is supposed
> to be an optional package, not something used by core.  But I admit
> that I have no clear idea of the purpose of bundling use-package with
> Emacs, so maybe what I say makes no sense.

It is common to use `use-package' in such a way that a configuration can
bootstrap itself.  That is to say that when installing Emacs on a new
device, all you need to do is to place your init.el in the right spot,
and when Emacs is started the first time everything is installed and
configured "automatically".  Having `use-package' available OOTB (or at
least on ELPA) would make this easier to do because you wouldn't have to
add and configure MELPA.  In my estimate, "use-package" is still one of
the most popular packages that is not available from either GNU ELPA or
NonGNU ELPA, so this move might help more people to be satisfied by the
ELPAs.  This in turn could help promote package stability, as more
people move away from rolling release packages.