Bug#594750: ess: debian-pkg-add-load-path-item

[Kevin Ryde]

Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> writes:
>
> I was initially worried about leaving stale files / handles around. But if
> the copies get removed, the links would too.

You mean if the .elc's get removed?  Yes, with the emacsen-remove having
"rm -rf" (as it presently does) then the whole dir is zapped on dpkg
--remove.

> Kevin:  a patch would be good, or at least another example package you
> recommend I follow.

paredit-el is a small one which does this.  Though not the
debian-pkg-add-load-path-item as yet, cf bug#513048 :-).  The "ln -s" in
/usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/paredit-el is the operative
part.

There's a bit of choice how to write that ln command of course, either
each file individually or make the $FILES absolute paths and just one
command.  In my own code I've been content with something like

    el_dir=/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/tcd-format/
    elc_dir=/usr/share/$FLAVOR/site-lisp/tcd-format/

    cd $elc_dir
    ln -sf $el_dir/*.el .

(Whole thing at ftp://download.tuxfamily.org/user42/tcd-format-6.tar.gz
if desired.  The debian/ dir is inside the tar.)

I suppose I should propose something for the emacsen policy.  I think
there's enough advantages to el-with-elc to be worth asking for
everywhere.  So far I've only filed bugs against packages where the
sources are not accessible at all, proposing symlinks.