Re: https://melpa.org/packages/w3m-20180221.2059.tar: Not found

[Colin Baxter <m43cap@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>>> Boruch Baum <boruch_baum@xxxxxxx> writes:

    > On 2018-11-29 08:43, Colin Baxter wrote:
    >> Would not moving from CVS to git add to confusion in that there
    >> would be two emacs-w3m git distributions, only one of which would
    >> be official. At least with CVS, a user does not have to worry
    >> about getting the `wrong' URL, the labels git and CVS being
    >> sufficient discriminators. Just a thought.

    > A thought worth considering and responding to; here are my initial
    > thoughts, for what they're worth:

    > 1] There already does exist some measure of small confusion, in
    > that may emacs users install emacs-w3m using MELPA, think that
    > method gives them the latest official release. It's a reasonable
    > assumption, and based upon the lack of complaints, it seems that
    > the administration of 'emacs orphanage' seems to be conscientious
    > in keeping the unofficial mirror accurate and up-to-date.

    > 2] Based upon the account name chosen for 'emacs orphanage', my
    > guess is that project doesn't see itself as an ideal source for
    > emacs projects, and they would be glad to rid themselves of any
    > project for which the developers would step forward and fill
    > whatever gap led to 'emacs orphanage' assuming a role.

    > 3] Having the emacs-w3m project migrate to git would benefit the
    > project greatly by making it easier to manage the project, and
    > easier for people to contribute to it.

    >    3.1] Does anyone who has used git *like* cvs? Personally, I
    > tried. I really did try very hard, and found myself writing
    > complex scripts to perform tasks that are simple commands in
    > git. Also, my internet connectivity isn't great, so it can be a
    > drag to need to connect to a CVS half a world away for any version
    > control action (or we could all move to Japan).

    > 4] One option the project could consider is just to adopt the
    > 'emacs-orphanage' git repository as its own. The advantage of this
    > is that all the people worldwide who may possibly have cloned that
    > repository, and developed code based upon it, would have
    > compatible commit hashes on their master branch with the official
    > repository.

    >    4.1] A barrier to this option would be if some deficiency were
    > to be found in the 'emacs-orphanage' repository. I noticed that
    > their copy omits historical branches, but that could easily be
    > fixed.  A more serious possible issue would be the theoretical
    > that some historical meta-data is missing from the emacs-orphanage
    > commits.

    > 5] It may be a simpler quality-assurance task for the project to
    > perform its own migration from scratch, instead of relying on the
    > 'emacs-orphanage' repository. On the other hand, 'emacs-orphanage'
    > likely has more experience performing these type of migrations.

    > -- hkp://keys.gnupg.net CA45 09B5 5351 7C11 A9D1 7286 0036 9E45
    > 1595 8BC0


This is an extremely thoughtful response. Thank you. I use CVS and git
in my own work and don't have any particular preference, but, naively,
I had not appreciated the subtleties involved in choosing between
them. The absence or corruption of data from commits of a legacy git
could be an issue, as you point out. Perhaps retaining the status quo
isn't a bad idea!

Thanks again for your reply, best wishes,


Colin Baxter
m43cap@xxxxxxxxxx