Emacspeak discussion list

[Tim Cross <theophilusx AT gmail.com>]

Raman, you just beat me to it! I agree 100%

I was reading the thread where John and Robert were trying to get John's
version of the swift server working and the main thing which jumped out
at me was the core issue seemed to be Robert's attempt to be overly
helpful and as a consequence has got into a situation where installation
has become too complicated and error prone.

Robert, I highly recommend that instead of trying to automate and
simplify the installation of the switftmac server, just write up some
very simple installation instructions. If you really want to automate
part of the process, your instructions could just stipulate that the
user should define the environment variable EMACSPEAK_DIR which points
to the root of the emacspeak installation and then have your scripts use
that variable to determine what to do or where to place stuff. Your
script could even exit with an error message if the environment variable
does not exist.

Tim




"\"T.V Raman\"" (via emacspeak Mailing List) <emacspeak AT emacspeak.net> writes:

> 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;  
>  > > --