Package: dh-elpa Version: 1.14 Severity: normal Hi David,
As discussed on IRC, filing this bug. You had also mentioned how this discussion might lead to an update of Policy and a wishlist bug against the info package. The resolution of this issue will affect all elpa-packages that install things outside of their elpa-src/package-version dir. tldr ELPA spec: must directive to install everything to elpa-src/package-version. a) Information about the ELPA spec is found in "Multi-file Packages" in the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, available online or from the non-free package emacs-common-non-dfsg info "(elisp) Multi-file Packages". Obviously we want to do what's best for Debian users, #1, this means that /usr/share/doc/package should contain the expected documentation. b) It's possible that there exist Emacs packages that will not run if their bits are installed outside of their elpa-src dir. We should have a policy on if they should be patched and/or if symlinks should be provided. Of course this is just part of the work on packaging software... #2 I think in most cases it would be better to digress from the upstream spec and install things using dh_language (the packages I'm aware of are irony-mode and elpy, but I'm sure there are others). eg: dh_elpa handles *.el and files from other languages should be handled using other dh_helpers (eg: dh-python in the case of elpy). See note at [b] as it also applies here. I anticipate that will emerge as more of an issue in the next 5-to-10 years with the proliferation of interpreted languages, deeper integration between Emacs and these languages, along with a second class of potential issues when using a dh_language. #3 Info pages. Related to #1 with one caveat: Debian's standalone info program only support info pages outside of /usr/share/info by using the INFOPATH variable. If we follow a strict definition of [a] then symlink /u/s/info/package.info -> elpa-src/package-version/package.info However, this doesn't handle the case where GNU Emacs provides an info page for a mode that exists as an elpa-package (eg: org-mode). Workarounds: i) make Rob's life difficult by complicating how src:emacs handles Debian alternatives. ii) file a bug against src:info and hope that it gets fixed, and that info gains the ability to read info files outside of the system default INFOPATH. iii) add support to dh-elpa for setting INFOPATH using a similar method to /etc/bash_completion.d (eg: drops a file in /etc/info.d)...I guess this could be useful to non-dh-elpa-using packages, but I'm not aware of any. Meanwhile, the info issue does not exist for users who use Emacs' info-mode to view info files... I hope this bug entry is reasonably complete and not too long. Sincerely, Nicholas