Re: Moving Gnus development to Emacs?

[Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 10:52 PM, CHENG Gao <chenggao@royau.me> wrote:

>>> If package.el becomes APT like, that'll be cool, really cool.
>>
>> What does this mean? Command-line tools like `apt', `apt-get' or
>> `apt-cache' (or `apm' in Atom)? If so, I think a simple wrapper script
>> to `emacs --batch' is enough.
>
> I don't mean this. Sorry for my ambiguous expression.
> Mainly I mean package.el can do dependency check and install proper
> dependent packages. Also can handle different Emacs versions since
> packages may stop supporting some Emacs versions or not yet catch up with
> latest version. But it may be too complicated.

Thanks for the clarification.

Although I'm not quite familiar with both package.el and APT, AIUI
package.el can already do dependency check and handle different Emacs
versions.  You can use the "Package-Requires" header, for example:

   ;; Package-Requires: ((emacs "24.1") (cl-lib "0.5") (async "1.6"))

In Emacs 25, you can also use the command `package-autoremove' to remove
all packages which were installed strictly as dependencies but are no
longer needed, similar to `apt-get autoremove'.

Maybe I'm missing something, would you please explain?

PS: perhaps we should change the subject line of this subthread.