Subject: Re: bug#65283: 29.1; package-vc-install fails to install package "ement" because some dependencies installed by it are omitted from load-path

From: Adam Porter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2023 12:28:25 -0500

On 8/14/23 03:13, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
> Adam Porter <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> Wanting to test whether package-vc-install in Emacs 29.1 is now a
>> suitable replacement for Quelpa for installing my Ement.el package from
>> git, I started an instance of Emacs 29.1 in a clean configuration and
>> evaluated:
>>
>>    (package-vc-install "https://github.com/alphapapa/ement.el")
>>
>> It seemed to proceed, installing Ement's dependencies, but when it began
>> to compile Ement itself, it gave errors about not being able to find one
>> of the dependencies, taxy-magit-section:
> 
> Did the installation actually fail, or were these warnings just printed?
> In my case, I got a few error messages as well, but ement was available
> after the command had finished.

Eager macro expansion errors indicate macro-expansion failure and 
compilation failure; the package is not installed correctly.

As well, as I said, the taxy-magit-section package is not present in the 
load-path, which means it can't be loaded by ement at load time.

These problems don't occur when installing ement and its dependencies 
from GNU ELPA with package-install, nor when installing them from git 
with Quelpa.

>> I've no explanation for why it would be omitted wile other
>> dependencies installed by the same command were added correctly.
>>
>> My only guess is that it could be that package-vc is not correctly
>> handling the fact that "taxy-magit-section" is maintained in the same
>> git repository as "taxy", in a separate branch.  GNU ELPA handles this
>> correctly, so it seems that package-vc should as well.
> 
> That shouldn't make a difference, since dependencies for VC packages are
> downloaded just like for regular packages.

Agreed, however it's the only difference I can think of in the 
taxy-magit-section package recipe.