Re: feature/package+vc 04c4c578c7 3/4: Allow for packages to be installed directly from VCS

[Philip Kaludercic]

On 3 November 2022 04:17:47 CET, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
>[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
>[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>  > > How about `checkout' instead of `repo'?  `package-checkout' to check
>  > > out from the ELPA repo, and either `package-upstream-checkout' or
>  > > `package-dev-checkout' for the upstream repo.
>
>  > As Stephan has pointed out that "-checkout" is misleading
>
>We are miscommunicating here, I think.
>
>                                                              since it
>  > sounds like a command that would just clone the repository
>
>Yes, exactly.  That is what I propose for this command to do: just
>check out that package's repo.
>
>                                                               without
>  > activating it as a package.
>
>Yes, exactly.  This command should check out the package, and no more.
>
>After that, you may wish to load the code of that package, or arrange
>for it to be loaded on other occasions in the future, or you may not.
>We should provide easy ways to do those things if you want to, but we
>shouldn't impose those things on you by default just because you
>asked to see those sources in a repo.
>

In that case we are simply talking about different things. My intention, which 
is also a popular feature among users, is to provide the ability to fetch and 
activate a package directly from source. Getting rid of this feature would 
undermine the point of the branch. What I can do, as I had previously proposed 
is to, is provide a second command, package-vc-checkout that does what you 
propose. It would take a package and a directory as arguments.