Mention elpa branch in admin/notes/BRANCH; clarify admin/notes/elpa.

[bpt/emacs.git] / admin / notes / elpa

NOTES ON THE EMACS PACKAGE ARCHIVE

The GNU Emacs package archive, at elpa.gnu.org, is managed using Bzr.
The Bzr branch is hosted on Savannah, and you can check it out with

  bzr branch bzr+ssh://USER@bzr.savannah.gnu.org/emacs/elpa elpa

Changes made to this branch propagate to elpa.gnu.org as follows.
There exists a copy of the elpa branch on that machine.  Someone with
access must log in, pull the latest changes from Savannah, and run a
"deployment" script that generates the content at the web-visible
location http://elpa.gnu.org/packages.

The reason things are set up this way, instead of using the package
upload utilities in package-x.el, is so that Emacs hackers can easily
edit the contents of the Savannah "elpa" branch, with the aid of
version control.  (For instance, multi-file packages are stored on the
Bzr branch in source form, not as tarfiles.)  Because deployment is a
semi-manual process, this allows us some flexibility in making changes
to the branch on Savannah.  Furthermore, one can use the elpa branch
to deploy a "local" copy of the package archive, for testing.

For details on how to use the elpa branch, see that README file in
that branch.