-Emacs Interface to command-line tool ack
-========================================
+Copyright (C) 2010-2011, 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+See the end of the file for license conditions.
-From http://betterthangrep.com/
- ack is a tool like grep, designed for programmers with large trees of
- heterogeneous source code.
-
- ack is written purely in Perl, and takes advantage of the power of
- Perl's regular expressions.
+This branch contains the sources, deployment scripts, and auxilliary
+files for the Emacs Lisp package archive (elpa.gnu.org).
-Feature requests and bug reports are welcome. Thanks.
+This file explains the branch layout, how to add and edit packages,
+and how to deploy the archive (either on elpa.gnu.org, or a local copy
+for testing purposes).
-Install
-----------
-Drop ack.el in the load-path and put (require 'ack) or (autoload 'ack
-"ack" nil t) in your .emacs.
+* DIRECTORY LAYOUT
-Usage
-----------
+** admin/ -- scripts for administering the package archive.
+** html/ -- HTML for the elpa.gnu.org website.
+** packages/ -- source code for the packages.
-M-x ack
+
+* PACKAGES
+
+** Contents of the packages/ directory:
+This directory holds the package sources, with one subdirectory for
+each package.
+
+Each directory in here corresponds to a package, which can be
+either a single-file package or a multifile package.
+
+A nightly cron job refreshes the GNU ELPA archive from this repository.
+
+This cron job only creates a new package when the "version" (as specified in
+the "Version:" header) of a package is modified. This means that you can
+safely work on the next version here without worrying about the unstable
+code making it to GNU ELPA, and simply update the "version" when you want to
+release the new code.
+
+** To add a package:
+
+*** Add a simple (1-file) package as packages/NAME/NAME.el.
+
+The file needs to follow the usual coding conventions (most importantly
+start with ";;; <file> --- <description>") and have a "Version:" and
+"Maintainer:" pseudo-header.
+
+*** Add a multi-file package as a directory, packages/NAME.
+
+It needs to have a file named packages/NAME/NAME.el which follows the same
+rules as above.
+
+*** Commit your changes the usual way ("git add", "git commit", etc).
+
+Changes in the Git repository do not immediately propagate to the
+user-facing archive (what users see when they do `M-x list-packages').
+That is done by deploying the archive, which happens automatically
+once a day, and the changes are only reflected when the "Version:"
+header changes.
+
+** Format
+
+Each package should follow the ELPA packaging conventions, but there are
+some differences due to the way the deployment script creates the packages
+and the web-pages from this source code:
+- Multi-file packages put the package metadata in the main <pkg>.el file
+ in the format used for single-file packages: the <pkg>-pkg.el file is
+ auto-generated from it.
+- Every package should have both a "Version:" *and* a "Maintainer:".
+- the "URL:" header can be used to specify the home page
+ of the package, if it's maintained externally.
+- A "News:" section (or "NEWS" file) can/should be used to list the
+ user-visible changes of each version.
+- The "Package-Type:" header can be used to force the type of package
+ created (can be either `simple' for single-file packages or `multi' for
+ tarballs). By default the type is decided based on whether there are
+ several Elisp files in the source.
+- If you want some files to not be included in the tarball, you can
+ put a `.elpaignore' file in the root of your package directory, where you
+ can list patterns of files to ignore (this file is passed to tar's -X).
+
+** External branches
+
+Some packages are maintained in external branches. These should be
+appropriately listed in the `externals-list' file.
+There are two different cases: subtrees and externals.
+
+In both cases, a copy of the code is kept in the `elpa' repository and
+should be sync'd with the upstream every once in a while. This copy may
+include local changes, tho ideally these should be kept to a minimum.
+
+In the `subtree' case, the copy of the code is kept here in the
+corresponding `packages/<pkg>' directory. You should be able to "git
+merge -s subtree" from the upstream branch.
+
+In the `external' case, the copy of the code is not kept here but in the
+`externals/<pkg>' branch in the `elpa' repository.
+You can check out all the external packages into the `packages' directory
+with the command:
+
+ make externals
+
+** Public incubation
+
+If you want to develop a package publicly prior to its first release (to
+benefit from others' feedback, primarily), but not in an external repo,
+you have 2 choices:
+- you can simply put "Version: 0" to indicate that this should not be
+ released yet.
+- or you can push to an "ephemeral" branch -- subject to rebase and eventual
+ removal upon finishing merge -- for the duration of the incubation.
+
+* DEPLOYMENT
+
+** To install all the packages "in place":
+
+ make externals
+ make
+
+This compiles and generates autoloads for all the packages in the
+packages/ directory. You can then add that directory, e.g. with:
+
+(eval-after-load 'package
+ '(add-to-list 'package-directory-list ".../elpa/packages"))
+
+** To deploy the package repository as a remotely-accessible archive:
+
+ git clone .../elpa
+ mkdir build
+ cd build
+ (cd ../elpa; git log --format=%H | tail -n 1) >.changelog-witness
+ ln -s ../elpa/admin
+ ln -s ../elpa/GNUmakefile
+ admin/update-archive.sh
+
+This deploys the packages to the staging/ directory (sibling of "build").
+Unlike "make", this makes a full copy of the packages, tars up
+multi-file packages, and doesn't byte-compile any files.
+
+** To access a deployed archive
+
+To access the archive via HTTP, have a symlink (say) /var/www/packages
+pointing to DEST/packages, and set up Emacs with
+
+ (setq package-archives '(("new-elpa" . "http://foo.com/packages")))
+
+You can also access the archive via normal file access. Such "local
+archives" are useful for debugging:
+
+ (setq package-archives '(("local-elpa" . ".../elpa/packages")))
+
+** Notes specific to elpa.gnu.org
+
+The way things are set up on this machine, we refresh the archive by
+a cron job. You can do it by hand by logging in (access set up by FSF
+admins), and
+
+ su elpa
+ cd ~elpa/build
+ admin/update-archive.sh
+
+Which makes a full archive deployment, as discussed above. The symlink
+/var/www/packages points to the staging package directory under
+/home/elpa/.
+
+The Org mode dailies are also fetched and added by the script
+admin/org-synch.sh, run as a cron job.
+
+\f
+This file is part of GNU Emacs.
+
+GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
+(at your option) any later version.
+
+GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
+GNU General Public License for more details.
+
+You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+\f
+Local variables:
+mode: outline
+paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
+end: