Bug#1138884: dh-elpa: simplify emacs-bundled addon handling

Sean Whitton <[email protected]> Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:58:42 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.emacsen
Message-ID	<87mrx9z7lp.fsf__43434.3597431266$1780650581$gmane$org@melete.silentflame.com>

control: severity -1 wishlist

Xiyue Deng [04/Jun 11:58pm -07] wrote:
> Currently dh-elpa has special handling of addons that are built-in to
> emacs so that instead of adding the addon to the Depends field, it adds
> emacs-common instead to fulfill the requirement. This has been causing
> issues that if an addon requires a version of the addon that is higher
> than the one bundled in emacs, dh-elpa will not know. As an example:
> recently a few packages start to require compat 31.0, while the current
> Emacs 30.2 bundles compat of version 30.2.9999. As dh-elpa does not
> handle the version, it still only provides emacs-common as part of
> "${elpa:Depends}". The current work around is to manually add
> "elpa-compat (>= 31.0)" to Depends of the addon package[1][2], which
> would be error-prone if there is no test to catch this.
>
> On the other hand, emacs-common generates breaks/replaces/provides for
> all bundled addons with their elpa-* names since 1:30.1+1-7. Using
> compat as an example, emacs-common will have the following:
>
> ,----
> | Break: elpa-compat (<< 30.2.9999)
> | Replaces: elpa-compat (<< 30.2.9999)
> | Provides: elpa-compat (= 30.2.9999)
> `----
>
> With this info, dh-elpa does not really have to do any special handling
> anymore, and just issuing the standard versioned elpa-compat as part of
> `${elpa:Depends}', and apt should do the right thing. Consider the
> following 2 cases:
>
> * emacs-git-modes depends on "elpa-compat (>= 29.1.4.1)"; emacs-common
>   30.2 provides a higher version of compat, so emacs-common can fulfill
>   this dependency (you can also install elpa-compat 31.0.0.1 of course,
>   which will also take precedence.)
>
> * transient depends on "elpa-compat (>= 31.0)"; emacs-common 30.2 cannot
>   fulfill this requirement, so elpa-compat 31.0.0.1 will be installed.
>
> So it looks like after emacs 1:30.1+1-7, dh-elpa does not need to have
> special handling of bundled addons anymore.
>
> If this sounds good, I'll prepare an implementation.

Yes, I think you're right, we can change this now.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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