Create VM ELPA package

[Mark Diekhans]

A ELPA package would make VM easier to install and maintain.

A issue is the C encode/decode programs. I don't believe ELPA has any mechanism to compile C code. However, they have no dependencies beyond the C library, which means the only configuration requirement is the C compiler itself.

[Uday Reddy (reddyuday)]

Hi Mark, I would appreciate help in creating the ELPA package. The binary converter problems are not needed any more.

However, the VM build currently recommends linking in bbdb and emacs-w3m support during compilation. You might try building it without the linking and see how well it works. See vm-build.el in the lisp directory for how the compilation is managed current.

[Mark Diekhans (markd-kermodei)]

Hi Uday,

So why are the binary converters no longer needed? I remember from years ago, it decoding
was very slow when done in lisp.

When bbdb is installed from a package, the make doesn't actually pick up the package, as -no-init-file is specified to emacs by compile.

It looks like melpa is take over and I am happy to working on getting it submitted. However,
It would be nice to have a new release with a more regular version numer, so I don't have to to write code to deal with v2.0b. ;-)

Mark

[Uday Reddy (reddyuday)]

I think FSF Emacs has always had base64 encoders/decoders built-in. But Kyle
Jones had this remark in vm-mime.el

;; The FSF Emacs version of this is unforgiving
;; of errors, which is not in the spirit of the
;; MIME spec, so avoid using it.

I have started using it it in the trunk in revision 1434 (in 2012) and
nobody reported any problems with it. So I think it is ok.

As for ELPA, there are two issues. (1) They wanted to source code files to
be structured using some standards, which involve a lot of editing, but
mostly clerical work. (2) There are dependencies for compilation, which are
marked with eval-and-compile and eval-when-compile directives in the lisp
files. ELPA seems to compile files in arbitrary order, which may or may not
work.

As for linking in BBDB and Emacs-w3m, I think it is mostly add-ons that are
affected: vm-rfaddons.el, vm-avirtual.el, vm-serial.el, vm-pine.el,
vm-pcrisis.el etc. Emacs-w3m is also referred to in various files. So, at
least some things won't work if they are not provided during
compilation. All this needs to be checked.