(copied from emacs-devel) Re: Adding Emms to ELPA (take 2), and a technical question

[Yoni Rabkin]

From: Yoni Rabkin <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: Adding Emms to ELPA (take 2), and a technical question
To: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
Cc: Robert Pluim <address@hidden>, address@hidden
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 10:43:39 -0400 (58 minutes, 27 seconds ago)

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > Iʼd take a look at 'pdf-tools', it both compiles C-code and installs
>   > necessary packages using 'apt-get' and similar.
>
> That is an undesirable practice: it turns package installation into
> something users won't keep track of.
>
> (Secondary practical issue: to succeed in running apt-get it would
> have to run as root, I think.)

I've had a look at pdf-tools and arrived at the conclusion that we won't
be copying much from what pdf-tools does into Emms; the two project are
too different, and pdf-tools does a few of other things I don't agree
with. Any copying will probably be limited to the some stuff in the
Makefile of pdf-tools that helps it prepare to be distributed with ELPA.

That's the short of it. No need to read more if that is all you needed
to know. Below the line is the longer version for anyone curious, or
with too much time on their hands.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

pdf-tools does a lot more compilation than Emms. pdf-tools comes with
over 13,000 lines of C/C++, while Emms has under 200 lines of C/C++.

pdf-tools requires the compilation step in order to function at all. But
Emms works fine without compiling anything, and only uses the
compilation step to provide a binary which enhances functionality.

Where Emms and pdf-tools are alike is that they both require build-tools
to be present on the machine, and the compilation step is in essence the
same. This is why I'll see if the pdf-tools Makefile has anything
valuable for Emms and use that.

Outside of compilation, I find it annoying that pdf-tools doesn't come
with a proper manual. I needed to go and look up to figure out how to
read the org file that came with pdf-tools. It isn't that much text, and
the annoying folding that org does for what amounts to a simple README
file is gratuitous at best.

pdf-tools also uses its a package/distribution manager called cask, and
also something called appveyor which I looked up on Wikipedia and found
that "AppVeyor is a hosted, distributed continuous integration service",
but that left me none the wiser as to why an AppVeyor file/s come with
pdf-tools or what I am supposed to do with them. None of those make
sense for such a small project, so I'm assuming that those are simply
the tools the author/s of pdf-tools are used to working with, so that is
what they used.


-- 
   "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"