Re: [gnu elpa] Adding disk.el

On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 3:48 PM Mario Rosell <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hello.
>
> A few weeks ago I sent an Emacs patch for adding =disk.el= to the
> upstream Emacs dist, since it didn't get accepted, I am now submitting
> it as part of GNU Elpa.
>
> disk.el provides an indent-tabs-mode interface to block devices, plus a
> couple commands to manipulate them.
>
> Repo is on SourceHut: https://git.sr.ht/~rosell/disk.el
>
> Since this is my first Elpa package, please tell me if I did something
> wrong...
>
> Thanks in advance.
>

The comments you received in the original note about adding disk.el to
Emacs proper still stand.  Once it's in ELPA, assuming it gets there, it
will still be a namespace and discoverability challenge as is.  To amplify
the concern even further beyond what I earlier said:

    Part of the challenge is that "disk" doesn't mean disk like it used
to.  A block device can be virtual and point to just about anything that
implements the API including network devices and "FUSE" devices that aren't
disks.  Choosing a name that best matches the package's actual intent is
better.

To me, calling it "disk.el" suggests it should work on most platforms where
people use Emacs like MS-Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.  So in
addition to it being a misnomer as disk doesn't always mean disk (though it
could be called block device or something similar), it should at least try
to work on at least one other platform and present a thoughtfully uniform
API under which other implementations can live.  Otherwise, I'd call it
"linux-block-device-mounter.el" or something like that to be clear it has
no intention of being more (for example, I didn't see a way to format a
block device just view/mount/unmount).