Some oddies in the auctex (11.55) installation

[Uwe Brauer]

Hello

This is an issue which concerns both the auctex developement team and
the xemacs team, hence my double posting.

The default behaviour for a auctex installation using xemacs
that is
./configure --with-xemacs=/usr/bin/xemacs

has the result, that the files, which are generated by the make
process, will be installed in


infodir = ${packagedir}/info
lispdir = ${packagedir}/lisp
packagedir = /usr/share/xemacs21/xemacs-packages
auctexdir= ${lispdir}/auctex


I consider such a choice as *bad*.
First it will need root privileges, second it will install in the
directory where the _official_ xemacs pkg sits.

So I suggest that the default value are:

either the pkg directory is
packagedir = /usr/share/xemacs21/site-packages

Which still would need root privileges or the value
is
packagedir = ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages.


It is true that the INSTALLATION file says something about how to set
the packagedir, that is to run
./configure --with-xemacs=/usr/bin/xemacs --with-packagedir=/DIR
but in any case, the *default* behaviour should not be the one mention
above.

I suggest if
./configure --with-xemacs=/usr/bin/xemacs
is executed, a message pops up saying,

"you did not specify neither the packagedir nor the lispdir option".


Besides the package generated this way *does not* include a MANIFEST
file, so uninstall could be a little tricky, recall that the xemacs
are installed according to the structure
/lisp/packagename
/man/packagename

But not

/packename/lisp
/packename/man

In the letter deleting the packagename directory would delete the
installed files, in the former you have to go directory by
directory. So that is where a MANIFEST file comes in handy (posted a
while ago I simple function to delete the content of a 3rd party
package by reading the MANIFEST file)


I would appreciate any comments of the Xemacs development team on this
issue.

Thanks


Uwe Brauer