> From: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On Behalf Of Achim Gratz > Loyall, David writes: > > And that's why civilized programs don't depend on external executables > > from $PATH. > > Then practically all programs are uncivilized, especially when considering > that > dynamic libraries are just another form of external executables.
Yes. But would you grant me that this is done in a more orderly fashion? > > Now, I'd imagine that some people have argued in the past that org > > shouldn't depend on external executables. Clearly those arguments > > have failed. > > I'm sure that if you could point to an Emacs package that allows to work with > archives without depending on external executables it would be used > instead, but I'm not aware of any such package: ox-odt uses arc-mode for > unzipping (which in turn uses call-proc for actually doing it) and then > call-proc > itself to do the zipping. I realized shortly after my post that calling external executables is the norm, not the exception. Also, I must apologize, my general tone in that message was terrible. I'm experimenting with quitting smoking. Suggestion: never start. > > But, let's take a fresh look. How about this rule of thumb: don't > > depend on external executables **from $PATH**. > > > > Can we agree on that? > > No, because I can't really see the point, especially since Emacs doesn't use > just $PATH for call-proc, but a user option exec-path (whose default value is > a copy of $PATH, but even a cursory look on $PATH on a Windows system > should convince you that you really should change this). > > > How about: don't depend on external executables from $PATH, but allow > > the user to override via config. > > How about: if you want that level of control, customize exec-path (and > perhaps exec-suffixes)? > > > This is important on the 'reproducible research' front. > > Are we still talking about Windows? No. Well, kinda. > You'd need an audited system if you > want to take it that far, I'm not sure anybody has tried to do this on Windows > and is still outside the asylum. The only practical way seems to deliver the > reproducible research as a VM (yes, that has other problems). Yeah, I've thought about that a little bit. I heard somebody say the other day that according to some survey, x percent of people don't know the difference between a search engine and a browser. Would they know the difference between an application and a VM that auto-starts an application? ...If you just change the title bar of Virtualbox to say "Emacs" instead... I wrote ~2200 characters on this subject, just now, but then I stashed it away rather than present it here before asking: has this been proposed before? What was the outcome? > Regards, > Achim. Cheers, --Dave