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 administering the package archive.
** 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, with one subdirectory for
each package.

** To add a package:

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

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

*** Commit your changes 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.


* DEPLOYMENT

** To use the package repository as a "site installation" of packages:

  make site

This compiles and generates autoloads for all the packages in the
packages/ directory, and creates a site/ directory containing symlinks
to the package directories.

Now you have to add this site/ directory to `package-directory-list',
and all the packages will be available.

** To deploy the package repository as a remotely-accessible archive:

  make archive

or

  make archive-full

This deploys the packages to the archive/ directory.  Unlike "make
site", this makes a full copy of the packages, and tars up multi-file
packages.

A full deployment also copies the admin scripts to archive/admin, and
fetches externally hosted packages (currently, the Org daily builds)
and adds them to the archive.

** To access 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

Then make 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.


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/>.


Local variables:
mode: outline
paragraph-separate: "[ 	]*$"
end: