Re: [VETO] Support package-prefix and fix mail-locking in configure

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen J Turnbull <[email protected]> writes:

Stephen> As far as I can see, your agenda for years has been a fixed and frozen
Stephen> hierarchy with a single root, and all pieces of XEmacs in their
Stephen> well-known and eternally unchangeable places relative to that single
Stephen> root.  Your love for symlinks is one manifestation: the idea is to use
Stephen> the symlinks to fool XEmacs into thinking the packages are in their
Stephen> Proper Places when in fact they're located in /root/alone/knows/lib/.

True.  (Actually, the agenda has been that there may be several such
hierarchies---cf. `emacs-roots', but the essential point stands.)

Stephen> Now, I don't believe that you have deliberately concealed this, but
Stephen> AFAICT the majority of XEmacs developers and users have a two-root
Stephen> intuition.  There is the core root, and there is the package root
Stephen> (which according to the intuition actually might be multiple, but is
Stephen> singular for normal installations).

Stephen> This divergence of intuitions results in a complete failure of
Stephen> communication, because the minority intuition is the basis for the
Stephen> actual design, but it is spelled out nowhere.

While I accept what you say, the documentation does say:

>   Moreover, XEmacs expects late hierarchies in the subdirectories
> `site-packages', `mule-packages', and `xemacs-packages' (in that order)
> of the `<root>/lib/xemacs' subdirectory of one of the installation
> hierarchies.

Stephen> I really really want a rationale document _first_, explaining what the
Stephen> "ideal" XEmacs installation looks like, and why it looks that way, and
Stephen> to what degree a "normal" installation may vary from the idea.  I
Stephen> suspect many developers will be surprised by parts of it.

We've been going around that question for years: I did try to say just
that in the XEmacs manual, but somehow it's too unclear for people to
understand.  So I really need help in finding out specifically where
the documentation I wrote falls down.  A good start would be why the
above paragraph didn't answer your question.

-- 
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla