Subject: Re: bug#38140: ELPA needs a standard mechanism for single-package compilation

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2020 11:45:18 +0100

Raffael Stocker <[email-masked]> writes:

> To compile a single ELPA package for tests or during development, it is
> currently necessary to clone/pull the whole elpa.git.  This is wasteful
> if only a single package is of interest.  ELPA should have a standard
> mechanism that allows (pulling/)compiling/testing etc. of single
> packages.  I request that such a mechanism be implemented.

I don't think we want to split up elpa.git into many small ones to
support this use case, since the other side of the coin is that it
would make the job harder for the ELPA maintainers.

If you really want this, you could try "git clone --filter", but I'm
not sure if the GNU repositories are configured to allow for that.

Note also that there is already the possibility in ELPA to use an
external repository.  This is optional and only used when there is a
specific need though, IIUC.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

PS. The repository is only 174 MB on my disk, which IMO is not that
much in this day and age.