emacro 2.8.5 open for voting

Joshua Daniel Franklin joshuadfranklin@yahoo.com
Fri Dec 12 07:08:00 GMT 2003


Bruce,

Please keep replies on the mailing list. I definitely don't have all the
answers, and the discussion might also help others. 
Comments are below.

--- Bruce Ingalls <bingalls@nj.rr.com> wrote:
> Joshua Daniel Franklin wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 05:27:46PM -0500, bingalls@nj.rr.com wrote:
> >  
> >>EMacro is a .emacs system that makes Emacs (and XEmacs) easy.
> >>http://emacro.sourceforge.net/cygwin/
> >> 
> >>I'm not an emacs user so I haven't tested this package, but I think
> >>there's an issue with your postintall script:
> >>
> >>-----
> >>#!/bin/sh
> >>#/etc/postinstall/emacro.sh for Cygwin
> >>#Silently overwrite any .emacs or old EMacro version found in /etc/skel
> >>cp -f /etc/defaults/etc/skel/.emacs /etc/skel
> >>cp -fR /etc/defaults/etc/skel/emacs/ /etc/skel
> >>-----
> >>
> >>Why overwrite the user's existing config? Check out some of the other 
> >>packages deal with this issue, as a random example wget:
> >>
> >>-----
> >>#!/bin/sh
> >>
> >>VERSION=1.9.1
> >>
> >>if [ ! -f /etc/wgetrc ] ; then
> >>    cp /usr/doc/wget-${VERSION}/sample.wgetrc /etc/wgetrc
> >>fi
> >>-----
> >>    
> >>
> Good point. However, even the above script has problems.
> You can never upgrade wgetrc.
> 
> Apply this to EMacro, the install would fail, and the user will never 
> know why.
> 
> Thus, a better solution is to move the existing config file(s) in /etc 
> to a backup name.
> This, too has problems:
> 
> First, presumably an earlier version of wgetrc is sitting in /etc. It 
> just got renamed with the current version, which is confusing. This 
> could get even more confusing, if you are installing an older version of 
> wget over a newer version, and the newer version gets an old version name.
> Perhaps a process ID works better as an extension?
> 
> Second, If the user re-installs the current version of wget, the backup 
> is wiped out.
> 
> Third, how much should the preremove script delete?
> If you remove the current version, only, then you leave clutter around, 
> causing disk leakage.
> If you remove all of them, then what was the point of backups?
> 
> Finally, I would have to decide where to put my /etc/skel backups. I 
> certainly would not want them copied to each user's directory. Is there 
> a standard (location) for this?

All this sounds like the issues in upgrading a package, not just the 
configuration files. Since emacro is, if I understand correctly, a 
configuration system for {,x}emacs, maybe a solution would be to install
the /etc/skel files directly, so that they are automatically removed when
the package is upgraded. Of course, a user may manually copy the files
to save them if desired. The way you have it packaged may not be an issue
at all. 

> >>ITP or "intent to package" in
> >><http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-12/msg00045.html>
> >>
> >>I hope this helps.
> >>    
> wtf? no rtfm 4 tla-s? ;) Thanks. this helps. :|
> btw, there is no explanation for the script following the -cut-here- but 
> I assume that it is a postinstall.

No, Dr. Zell's "-cut-here-" script is a handy script for reviews to automate 
downloading all the prospective packages. For example, I think the last package
I reviewed was sgrep back in October, which seems to have gone AWOL. I
downloaded the tar.bz2's to make sure they looked correct ("usr/share" for
docs, no leading "./", and so on) without installing them. Just installing the
packages from a mirror doesn't let you do this. Also I try to build the package
in /tmp or somewhere to double-check the build requirements. I believe some
people have some scripts to check some of these things automatically. 

As you probably noticed, emacro is being treated differently since it's a
different sort of package. First, you basically have to be an emacs user to
review and as far as I can tell no one on the list was using it already (as
with e.g. ImageMagick). Also, the things we're used to dealing with like dll
dependencies just don't apply. I'm not sure what else to tell you, other than
if you were already maintaining a few "normal" packages the list would probably
be more comfortable with this "odd" one. It's a little handicap, but assuming
that some of the voting members (anyone maintaining a package) use emacs, you
should be able to get it into the net distro. 

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