Emacspeak discussion list

["T.V Raman" <raman AT google.com>]

I recommend you do nothing -- focus on getting the swiftmac server  to
be really high-quality.

1. Right now it's in the emacspeak git repo,  which is where
   bleeding-edge users live
2. So they dont need hand-holding; if they do, then they dont belong
   on the bleeding edge.
3. All your make script should do is to install a symlink to the
   binary it builds in  the servers directory of your checkout
4. The .servers file is checked in, so adding swiftmac to it is a
   one-time operation.

   Summary:

   1. When given the choice between clever and simple, always pick simple.

   2. Lazy programmer is a good programmer (Larry Wal, author of Perl).

   3. Emacspeak in 28+ years has had a server added to it roughly once
      every 5 years; the effort to add a server should reflect that.

   4.  I think you would benefit from reading TAOUP by Eric Raymond

Robert Melton writes:
 > TV--
 > 
 > My lisp uses that exact variable, the purpose of the bash script is just 
 > to find which emacs to run and call my lisp code.
 > 
 > The purpose of this is for people using the cutting edge version of 
 > swiftmac, they can use "make install" to place it in the emacspeak 
 > directory.  This does not impact the contributed code in anyway, as it 
 > doesn't need to find the emacspeak directory, and does not contain this 
 > pair of finding scripts.  
 > 
 > So, if I should not use a shell script to run emacs or emacspeak to find 
 > where to install the swiftmac files to, how do you recommend I do it?  
 > User input? 
 > 
 > > On Jan 9, 2024, at 13:01, T.V Raman <raman AT google.com> wrote:
 > > 
 > > I would advice against doing this. Emacspeak is designed to work from
 > > under a single directory -- rather than splattering its files around the
 > > filesystem. See how variable emacspeak-directory is defined --
 > > everything anchors on it. Any shell script you create will be fragile
 > > because it gets more and more complex in the face of "handle different
 > > use cases". This is also why emacspeak abandoned the make install rule,
 > > leaving it to distros to do what they found most suitable;  
 > > --

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