Copyright (C) 2010-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.


This branch contains the sources, deployment scripts, and auxilliary
files for the Emacs Lisp package archive (elpa.gnu.org).

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).


* DIRECTORY LAYOUT

** admin/    -- scripts for deploying the package archive.
                See the DEPLOYMENT section for details.
** html/     -- HTML for the elpa.gnu.org website.
** packages/ -- source code for the packages.


* PACKAGES

** Contents of the packages/ directory:

This directory holds the package sources.  Unlike the deployed package
archive, multi-file packages are present here as directories, not tar
files.  So, edits to the sources can be easily managed by Bzr.

*** Package sources
In the form of *.el files for simple (1-file) packages, or
subdirectories for multi-file packages.

** To add a package:

*** Add a simple (1-file) package as packages/NAME-VERSION.el.

*** Add a multi-file package a directory, packages/NAME-VERSION.

*** Commit your changes
This is done the usual way ("bzr add", "bzr commit", etc).

Changes in the Bzr 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 (see below).


* DEPLOYMENT

** The package-update.sh script

Use the script admin/package-update.sh to deploy a partial or full
copy of the package archive.  To run a partial deployment:

  /PATH/TO/admin/package-update.sh DEST

This deploys the packages in packages/ to DEST/packages.

To run a full deployment:

  /PATH/TO/admin/package-update.sh DEST 1

A full deployment additionally copies the admin scripts to DEST/admin,
creates a full tarball in DEST/packages/emacs-packages-latest.tgz, and
fetches externally hosted packages (currently, the Org daily builds)
and adds them to the archive.

The package-update.sh script only works if it lives in a bzr
repository.  It uses `bzr export' to deploy from the repository to the
destination directory.  If you have uncommitted changes in the working
copy, those changes are not deployed.

You can view the deployment log at DEST/update-log.

The other scripts in the admin/ subdirectory are used for fetching the
Org dailies.

** Accessing a deployed archive

To access the archive via HTPP, 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" . "DEST/packages")))

** Notes specific to elpa.gnu.org

The way things are set up on this machine, we refresh the archive by
logging in (login access set up by FSF admins), and

su elpa
cd ~elpa/elpa
bzr up
./admin/package-update /home/elpa/staging/ 1

The symlink /var/www/packages points to /home/elpa/staging/packages.

The Org mode dailies are fetched and added by the script
admin/org-synch.sh, which is run as a cron job (we also run this
script during deployment).


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/>.


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