Subject: Re: bug#59120: 29.0.50; [package-vc] Nowhere to find package-vc-archive-spec-alist

From: Philip Kaludercic <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2022 18:58:08 +0000

Yuan Fu <[email-masked]> writes:

>>> More over, it would be nice if the documentation of package-vc-install
>>> (docstring or manual) can explain how do I specify the branch when
>>> Using package-vc-install. From what I can see you can only specify the url
>>> and revision.
>> 
>> There is no explicit way to do this right now, besides switching to a
>> different branch after checking out the repository.
>> 
>> The only other thing you can do is provide a package specification, as
>> documented in `package-vc-selected-packages'.  That has a :branch
>> property.
>
> I wonder if I can define my own package archive, so that I can control
> everything easily, without setting up a full-blown archive with
> tarballs and a server. Because I’m not going to download any tarballs
> from the archive, and will only use package-vc-install on this
> personal archive. IOW a package archive that only provide package
> specs. Is that possible?

It should possible, you would have an empty archive-contents and an
elpa-packages.eld file containing all the specifications.  I haven't
tried it out though, so something might be broken -- but nothing that
can't be fixed.