BBDB ELPA-style packaging (was: ChangeLog 2010-12-15)

[Ted Z. <tz...@li...>]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:08:02 -0600 "Roland Winkler" <wi...@gn...> wrote: 

RW> On Thu Dec 16 2010 Ted Zlatanov wrote:
>> Roland, thank you for your work.  I'd like to package your version of
>> BBDB as `bbdb3' and put it in the Emacs GNU ELPA package repository.
>> I'd like to call it `bbdb3' because your version is pretty different
>> from BBDB 2.x and thus users will expect those changes when they
>> install it.  Would all of that be OK with you?

RW> I've seen ELPA but have not yet found the time to look at it in more
RW> detail.  But I am confident that putting the new BBDB there will be
RW> fine.  I assume that when you call the new BBDB on ELPA bbdb3, this
RW> does not require to rename the code itself. (If necessary, I could
RW> do that, too. But then I'd prefer a name that does not have a
RW> version number "built-in".)

No, it's just a tarball.  I don't think BBDB will require anything
more as far as packaging.

>> I'll use the http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/bbdb CVS repository and
>> synchronize from it daily; the GNU ELPA repo lives at
>> bzr://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/emacs/elpa/

RW> That would be perfect. At present, I consider the new BBDB in an
RW> alpha phase. It works pretty well for me and I believe that others
RW> have started to use it, too. But there are still some rough edges
RW> that I want to remove. So synchronizing bbdb3 on ELPA with the CVS
RW> repository of BBDB on savannah would be a good solution.

You should decide:

- do you want to take patches from Emacs or keep them separate?

- do you want to make BBDB provided with Emacs 24 by default through
  package.el?  (I want to be clear about this, people will be able to
  install it very easily.)

- can you work with me and the Emacs maintainers to assign the BBDB
  source code to the FSF?  We'll need to track down a lot of
  contributors and possibly rewrite code.

If the last one is too much work or not OK with the BBDB developers,
we can still package BBDB 3.x as "bbdb3" but it will have to go in Tom
Tromey's ELPA instead or you can set up your own ELPA-style archive
(it's really easy).  So it won't be as easy to obtain bbdb3 with a new
Emacs install and you won't get as many patches back from the Emacs
developers due to the lower visibility.

Ted