Bug#416410: [Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#416048: octave2.9-emacsen: use update-alternatives for octave-inf and co

[Rafael Laboissiere]

package octave2.9-emacsen
tags 416048 wontfix
thanks

* Pascal A. Dupuis <Pascal.Dupuis at worldonline.be> [2007-03-24 12:05]:

> Package: octave2.9-emacsen
> Severity: normal
> Tags: patch
>
> [snip]
>
> May I also ask for the use of update-alternatives to use the right 
> versions of octave-inf and co ? There are indeed three sources:
> emacs21-el_21.4a+1-3_all.deb
> octave2.9-emacsen_2.9.9-8etch1_all.deb
> octave2.1-emacsen

Although it is not very desirable to have many versions of octave-*.el
around, I do not really think that it is a real bug or, at least, that it
should be fixed.  Here is my rationale:

First, implementing an update-alternatives mechanism for these files is
quite complicated, because of the specifics of Emacsen initialization in
Debian.  I do not think that we could do it for the files in
/etc/emacs/site-stard.d/ (they are configuration files, after all).  Even
worse, it would not help to set alternatives to the *.el files, since the
*.elc files are compiled at install time.

Second, the order of priority of the three packages providing Octave support
for Emacsen is currently the following:

    1) octave2.9-emacsen
    2) octave2.1-emacsen
    3) emacs21-el

The octave2.*-emacsen packages contains the ultimate Emacs Lisp source files
for the Octave support, meaning that they are preferable than the ones in
emacs21-el.  Also, the files in octave2.1-emacsen are not newer than the
ones in octave2.9-emacsen.  So, the priority order above is fortunate
(although it was not designed to be so).

I will let this bug report open for now, but will close it in the near
future unless it is proven that this is a real bug.

-- 
Rafael