shipping elisp for notmuch in elpa-notmuch debian package

[David Bremner]

Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net> writes:

> On Wed 2019-12-04 08:53:14 -0400, David Bremner wrote:
>> Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net> writes:
>>>     rstdoc.el
>>>     make-deps.el
>>>     dir
>>
>> the first two are build tools. 
>
> if they're build tools then we don't need to ship them with
> elpa-notmuch, right?

Correct.

>
>> The latter is needed by the info files.
>
> needed how?  what functionality is missing?  with the current
> elpa-notmuch installed, if i do "M-x info" i see a bunch of notmuch
> entries that show up under a big "Miscellaneous" heading, which appears
> to be the contents of this /dir file.  If the purpose of it is just
> filing it under "Miscellaneous" that doesn't seem like much of a filing
> operation :P

iirc, it's needed to have them show up at all. Quite possibly the
contents of 'dir' could be improved.

>>> The package also ships a bunch of *.info files in that elpa
>>> module-specific directory, rather than shipping them in the typical
>>> /usr/share/info/ location.  These info files appear to be translations
>>> of the manpages or other basic notmuch documentation.  Is there a reason
>>> to ship them in the elpa-specific directory?
>>
>> It makes the elpa (make elpa) package self contained (with docs).
>> package.el knows how to install info files, so the debian-specific
>> tooling is not needed.
>
> sure, but if i "info notmuch" right now in debian, even with
> elpa-notmuch installed, i just get info redisplaying the notmuch(1)
> manpage, rather than rendering the info file which exists.  Is that the
> goal?

no. the standalone info reader is a weakness of this approach, since it
only looks in /usr/share/info.

It depends who you care about more, non-debian users of the elpa
package, or users of the standalone info reader. I'm not either...