path: root/2021/captions/emacsconf-2021-nongnu--nongnu-elpa-update--philip-kaludercic--main.vtt

WEBVTT

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Hello! My name is Philip,

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and I'll be giving a brief update on

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NonGNU ELPA.

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Before we begin,

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let's first make sure

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everyone's on the same page.

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What is NonGNU ELPA?

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Put simply, NonGNU ELPA

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is a new Emacs Lisp package archive.

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similar to its sister archive, GNU ELPA.

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The main difference is that

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GNU ELPA regards each package in the archive 

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to be part of Emacs itself.

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This means each significant contributor

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has to have signed their copyrights

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to the Free Software Foundation.

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NonGNU ELPA is made for packages

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that cannot ensure this condition.

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The immediate consequence of all of this

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is that more packages can be installed

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out of the box.

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All you need to install,

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for example, magit, evil-mode, slime,

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is a simple M-x package-install.

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The more subtle consequence

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is that ELPA distributes 

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stable packages by default.

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This differs from, for example,

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the community-maintained package archive MELPA, 

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where each change in the respective package repository

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triggers a new package to be rebuilt.

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Of course, "stable" here has to be taken

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with a grain of salt because,

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on the one hand, 

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a package maintainer can be very careful

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to avoid buggy code in their default branch,

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and on the other hand,

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a package maintainer can be too eager 

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to tag a new release

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without properly checking

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that the code works as intended.

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My personal hope is that

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more people using NonGNU ELPA

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be incentive for increase 

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for package development to shift away

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from the currently predominant

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rolling release model,

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improving the overall stability

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of Emacs configurations.

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Another side effect of the initiative

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is a chance to clean up

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the Emacs package space.

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Over the last few years,

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a lot of packages have been abandoned,

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have been broken, duplicated, 

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or even in some cases,

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replaced by functionality in Emacs itself.

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When reviewing packages for NonGNU ELPA,

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the opportunity to avoid these problems

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will hopefully also improve the general quality

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of Emacs packages.

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So, what is this update about?

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I'm taking Richard Stallman's announcement

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at EmacsConf 2020

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as my reference point.

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There, the idea, the history,

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and the motivation was explained,

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and the call for contributions was made.

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I won't be going into these aspects

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again this year.

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As this implies, there was nothing concrete

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at that point.

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The first practical steps towards NonGNU ELPA

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were taken up by Stefan Monnier.

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This included updating GNU ELPA's build system

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to support the requirements 

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of NonGNU ELPA as well.

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And so eventually, 

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the idea became a Git repository,

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nongnu.git on savannah,

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then a website,

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elpa.nongnu.org,

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and then around late December of last year,

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NonGNU ELPA was also added

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to the package-archives list.

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Sadly, progress stalled from this point on,

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with the new archive consisting of only

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five or six packages.

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It took until August

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for more packages to be added,

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some by their respective authors,

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such as Magit and Projectile,

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but most by contributors such as myself.

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As of recording, 

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the archive has around 70 packages,

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with more pending to be out soon.

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These include popular applications

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such as the previously-mentioned Magit,

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SLIME, or wgrep,

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major modes like php-mode, rust-mode,

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go-mode, clojure-mode, lua-mode,

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markdown-mode... You get my point.

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And a number of visual themes,

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among other things.

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If you are interested in using NonGNU ELPA,

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but you are still bound 

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to an older version of Emacs,

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all you have to do is

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to add the snippet

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from the NonGNU ELPA home page

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updating the package-archives variable.

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For Emacs 28 and newer,

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one might have to watch out 

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that you're not setting package-archives directly,

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and if you are doing so,

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to update the value.

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Emacs 28 only updates the default value

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and will not manipulate the user's configuration.

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Finally, a short note

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for package developers.

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Most packages up until now

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haven't been added by their maintainers.

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For the most part,

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I have been collecting and reviewing the packages

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which have been added,

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which takes time

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and is one of the main reasons

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why we're still at only 70 packages.

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This is of course not a permanent solution.

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The intention here is 

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to bootstrap, so to say,

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the interest in NonGNU ELPA

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by making it more interesting to you

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and thus more interesting to contribute to.

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If you are interested in adding a package

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that already exists, or a new package

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to NonGNU ELPA, all you need to do is

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send an e-mail to the 

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Emacs development mailing list,

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emacs-devel@gnu.org.

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This is an open mailing list

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and requires no special registration.

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Your message should 

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mention NonGNU ELPA in the subject

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and contain a link to a public Git repository

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in the body. Ideally, a brief explanation

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on what your package does

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would be much appreciated.

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The proposal will be reviewed

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by the readers of the mailing list,

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and after a bit of back-and-forth

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on possible issues and improvements,

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the package will hopefully be added

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to NonGNU ELPA itself.

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The simplest mistake a lot of packages make

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is to either not have 

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or maintain a version attribute

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in the package header.

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This is done despite actually being necessary

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for a well-formed Emacs package

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according to the Elisp manual.

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ELPA relies on this tag

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to detect new package versions

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that will be built and distributed.

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If the version isn't updated,

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no new package will be released,

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and any changes won't be made public.

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So, that's that on NonGNU ELPA.

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To summarize, NonGNU ELPA is an

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Emacs Lisp Package Archive for Emacs,

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without a need for copyright assignments.

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It works, it exists, and it's been used already.

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I'm looking forward to

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more packages being added to the archive

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and improving the overall experience

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of Emacs out of the box.

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Thank you for your interest, and goodbye.

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[captioned by sachac]