Re: Site-wide package customization

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Plus, this approach is not practical for other site configurations:
>> namely Linux distributions.  I'm realizing now that being able to
>> customize package.el site-wide would make it a lot easier for Linux
>> distributions (at least my preferred one, NixOS) to ship Emacs
>> packages as distribution packages.
>
> If we are bothered by what the distros do, we should talk to at least
> some of them.  Up front, it sounds unlikely they have problems,
> because they would approach us with bug reports when the early-init
> filre was added in Emacs 27.

I just checked Debian, and they're still using the same old patch:

    From 5a2dcc0916119e008cb5ecfa02e99915e86a27fa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
    From: Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>
    Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 22:46:22 -0500
    Subject: Run debian-startup and set debian-emacs-flavor
    
    Emacs runs debian-startup and sets debian-emacs-flavor.
    
    * Emacs runs debian-startup during the startup process unless
      site-run-file is false.
    
    * The global variable debian-emacs-flavor is bound to 'emacs.
    
    Author: Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>
    ---
     lisp/startup.el | 13 ++++++++++++-
     1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
    
    diff --git a/lisp/startup.el b/lisp/startup.el
    index 7ec500dfecb..e07e6515991 100644
    --- a/lisp/startup.el
    +++ b/lisp/startup.el
    @@ -441,6 +441,10 @@ tutorial-directory
       :type 'directory
       :initialize #'custom-initialize-delay)
     
    +(defconst debian-emacs-flavor 'emacs
    +  "A symbol representing the particular debian flavor of emacs running.
    +Something like 'emacs, 'xemacs21, etc.")
    +
     (defun normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path ()
       "Recursively add all subdirectories of `default-directory' to 
`load-path'.
     More precisely, this uses only the subdirectories whose names
    @@ -1493,7 +1497,14 @@ command-line
             ;; Sites should not disable the startup screen.
             ;; Only individuals should disable the startup screen.
             (let ((inhibit-startup-screen inhibit-startup-screen))
    -         (load site-run-file t t)))
    +          (progn
    +            ;; This form has been added by Debian to load all the
    +            ;; debian package snippets (dh-elpa, etc.).  It's in here
    +            ;; because we want -q to kill it too.
    +            (if (load "debian-startup" t t nil)
    +                (debian-startup debian-emacs-flavor))
    +            ;; This is the normal upstream behavior
    +            (load site-run-file t t))))
     
         ;; Load that user's init file, or the default one, or none.
         (startup--load-user-init-file

So I assume they simply haven't noticed that their `debian-startup` is
now loaded after `early-init.el` and after `package-quickstart.el`.

I suspect this is because both of those files are used only rarely,
mostly by "power users", and I expect many(most?) of those power users
would tend not to use (or even to avoid) most of what the
`debian-startup` might do.


        Stefan


PS: Loading `site-start.el` earlier also means loading it before
    creating the GUI/TUI frame.  In the past I would have been worried by
    such a change, but I think nowadays running Emacs as a daemon is
    common enough that a `site-start.el` which burps if run before
    having a GUI/TUI frame is highly unlikely.