Package system improvements!?

[steven Mitchell]

This is a little off the "Package system improvements" thread, but still 
about paths to lisp code.

In Windows, XEmacs is installed under Program Files.
That is not accessible over a network, because Windows doesn't want you 
to share your Program files over your own network.  That complicates 
things when you want to update a lisp file to several computers over 
your network.  So I made a directory which I could share over the 
network, and made a directory in Slackware to match, so I can update 
from either direction.

Where should user-written lisp code be placed?

Is that what "site-packages" is for?
Does site refer to all users on a single system?
Or does site refer to a site like a whole local network? Where an 
administrator would install packages and everybody use them?

There is reference to third-party packages in the docs(or web page? I 
forget).
Is there somebody out there who distributes code that way?  Packages that
are for XEmacs but are not submitted to the XEmacs project?
Or am I misunderstanding what is meant?

Getting back closer to topic: Stephen, I don't have the historical 
perspective that you and others do.  I am trying to understand the cases 
that users would have previously installed packages that are installed 
in other places.  What kind of packages would they have installed in 
other places?

It this for people with multiple versions of XEmacs installed?  To avoid 
having a second copy of each package on the hard drive?   If so, the 
reality of the day is that we have 500 GB and 1 terabyte hard drives 
cheap and extra copies of packages
might not be a problem as far as saving space goes.

If i have a 21.4 install and it is encapsulated with it's own copy of 
packages all in a self contained folder setup, and 21.5 in a similar 
setup so they each do not depend on each others files, I would think 
that was desirable.

Maybe that is wrong and developers have multiple versions done differently?
I only have multiple versions installed on 1 Windows system, so maybe I 
don't
understand how it is done in Linux.

Maybe there are other historical reasons that still apply to this?

Any idea how many users actually have packages installed in different 
places?
(other than me, when I installed them in the wrong place (grin))

Steve Mitchell