Package: emacs;
Reported by: Armin Darvish <armindarvish <at> gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 07:31:02 UTC
Severity: normal
Found in version 30.0.93
Message #14 received at 76325 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):
From: Philip Kaludercic <philipk <at> posteo.net> To: Armin Darvish <armindarvish <at> gmail.com> Cc: 76325 <at> debbugs.gnu.org Subject: Re: bug#76325: 30.0.93; package-vc-install fails with repositories that contain multiple single-file packages Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:24:39 +0000
Armin Darvish <armindarvish <at> gmail.com> writes:
> Hi Philip,
>
> I am on emacs versio 30.0.93. and I tried an init file like this:
> ,----
> | ;;; init.el --- -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-
> |
> | (require 'package)
> | (package-initialize)
> | (package-vc-install
> | '(consult-omni :url "https://github.com/armindarvish/consult-omni"
> | :main-file "consult-omni.el"))
> `----
Yes, I can reproduce the issue now, thanks!
>> The issue we have to keep in mind is that since we add the repository
>> directly to `load-path', all the files can be used no matter what
>> "specific" file you might intend to use. To retain usability and not
>> have unexpected function calls fail, we rather install all the
>> dependencies.
>
> My understanding was that packages are either a single-file package,
> which won't have this problem, or a multi-file package, in which case,
> the "Package-Requires: " header should only be in the main file and
> not the extra lisp files. As far as I know, other package managing
> systems (like MELPA) don't use hte "Package-Requires: " header in the
> files other than the main lisp file either.
To clarify the terminology, ELPA/MELPA are package archives that take
usually take a source code checkout and prepare packages. For each
package, they might specify or infer a main file or some other source of
information to get the metadata like package dependencies, but they will
also throw out all other files that are not part of the package.
Package-vc is kind of like that, in that it is an independent
implementation of ELPA's build scripts, but as the goal is to explicitly
load the directory with the source code checkout we don't remove the
"unrelated" files (that is one of the reasons we also advise against
combining multiple packages in the same directory).
> Note that, we can still
> add all the files in the repo to load-path, but when automatically
> making the "define-package" declaration in a "package-pkg.el" file,
> the dependencies should be inferred form the main file and not others,
> otherwise there will be weird looped dependencies.
I am not sure I follow your argument. The other files are still
installed and loadable, but broken since they are missing dependencies.
That is the state I wish to avoid.
There is a bug in the dependency resolution, but that is a separate
issue IMO.
> For example, in
> case of embark with the following init file:
>
> ,----
> | ;;; init.el --- -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-
> |
> | (require 'package)
> | ;; Adds the Melpa archive to the list of available repositories
> | (setq package-archives
> | '(("elpa" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
> | ("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/")
> | ("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")))
> | ;; Initializes the package infrastructure
> | (package-initialize)
> | (package-refresh-contents)
> |
> | (use-package embark
> | :vc (:url "https://github.com/oantolin/embark"))
> |
> `----
>
> I can see multiple versions of embark being pulled from MELPA becuase
> of looped depenncies in the embark-pkg.el file automatically created
> by package-vc-install. Here is the contents of that file:
>
> ,----
> | (define-package "embark" "1.1" "No description available." '((emacs
> | "25.1") (embark "0.9") (avy "0.5") (emacs "27.1") (compat
> | "29.1.4.0") (embark "1.0") (consult "1.0")) :kind vc :commit
> | "195add1f1ccd1059472c9df7334c97c4d155425e")
> `----
>
> Note that while this installs just fine, it is pulling 3 different
> versions of embark from MELPA becuase of this inferred looped
> self-dependency from differnt *.el files in embark repo, which is not
> the intended behavior by the author of that package.
>
>
> That said, I agree with the point that there can potentially be other
> solutions like terminating properly as you said or even better would
> be detecting and ignoring any self-dependency. I cannot think of any
> scenario where a package should depend on its own or on an older
> version of its own.
I agree. I'll try to find a solution to the issue by fixing the
recursion issue and update this thread.
>
> Philip Kaludercic @ 2025-02-16 18:53 :
>
>> Armin Darvish <armindarvish <at> gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I have noticed that with vc repositories that contain multiple related single-file
>>> packages, package-vc-install creates looped self-dependency that can cause errors.
>>>
>>> For example, trying to install the repository:
>>> <https://github.com/armindarvish/consult-omni>
>>> will result in "Lisp nesting exceeds ‘max-lisp-eval-depth’: 1601" error. This is
>>> because currently package-vc-install tries to read all ".el" files in the root
>>> directory to get the dependencies and build the "define-package" declaration in
>>> consult-omni-pkg.el. This is not compatible with repositories that have multiple
>>> single-file packages in the root directory. Instead, the dependencies should be
>>> inferred from the main lisp file only. This will be safe with multi-file packages
>>> as well because the convention is to have the "Package-Requires:" header only in
>>> the main lisp file and not the additional lisp files.
>>
>> What version of Emacs are you using? Installing your repository doesn't
>> raise any error when I try to do so.
>>
>>> There are other packages that have multiple single-file packages as well, for
>>> example, <https://github.com/oantolin/embark> includes embark and embark-consult in
>>> the root directory. Currently, installing embark with package-vc-install causes
>>> several different versions of embark being downlaoded because the dependencies are
>>> read from all of those files even though they are meant to be separate packages.
>>
>> The issue we have to keep in mind is that since we add the repository
>> directly to `load-path', all the files can be used no matter what
>> "specific" file you might intend to use. To retain usability and not
>> have unexpected function calls fail, we rather install all the
>> dependencies. The recursion error above hints at some programming
>> issue, where we don't terminate properly.
>>
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>> *Armin Darvish*
>>>
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> [www.armindarvish.com]
>>>
>>>
>>> [www.armindarvish.com] <https://www.armindarvish.com/>
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