Question about 'provides' and emacs packaging

[Achim Gratz]

Ken Brown via Cygwin-apps writes:
> There are currently five emacs packages: emacs-common, emacs,
> emacs-X11, emacs-w32, and emacs-lucid.  The first includes things that
> are needed by each of the other four, and those four each include an
> emacs binary.  The binary in the emacs package is
> /usr/bin/emacs-nox.exe.  The other packages contain
> /usr/bin/emacs-X11.exe, and so on.
>
> This way of naming the packages doesn't really reflect the contents of
> the emacs package.  It also means that anyone who installs emacs gets
> emacs-nox.exe, even if they plan to use one of the other three
> binaries.
>
> I would rather rename the current emacs-common package to emacs and
> the current emacs package to emacs-nox.  But then the new emacs would
> have to have a way of requiring the installation of at least one of
> emacs-nox, emacs-X11, emacs-w32, or emacs-lucid.  Is there any way to
> do this with our current setup machinery?

I don't think we have the transaction capability that would be necessary
to specify that the meaning of an already existing package name (two,
actually) changes in this manner.  You might have to use new package
names and place the appropriate obsoletions w.r.t. old names instead.

> My idea three years ago was to have the new emacs package require a
> "feature" called, for instance, emacs-bin, and then have each of
> emacs-nox, emacs-X11, emacs-w32, emacs-lucid "provide" that feature.

I have no idea if multiple packages can provide the same feature. It's
worth trying if it does what you want (you must pick at least one of
those).  What I'm reasonably sure we currently don't have is packages
providing the same feature, but conflicting among each other (you must
install one and only one package that provides the feature).  What calm
thinks of that is another thing entirely, I'd say.


Regards,
Achim.
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