Mysterious emacs-filesystem package

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1

Hello,

After I tried the Emacs editor and removed it from my system there are a few reminders of it.

$ sudo dnf list --installed | grep emacs
emacs-common.x86_64                                  1:30.2-28.fc44                      updates
emacs-filesystem.x86_64                              1:30.2-2.fc44                       fedora
emacs-gtk+x11.x86_64                                 1:30.2-28.fc44                      updates
emacs-pgtk.x86_64                                    1:30.2-28.fc44                      updates
emacsclient.x86_64                                   1:30.2-28.fc44                      updates

The emacs-filesystem package already looks different, according to its full version.

If I try to remove the emacsclient it wants to remove all other packages, except this mysterious emacs-filesystem package. If I try to see which packages depend on the emacs-filesystem the list is relatively short:

$ rpm -q --whatrequires emacs-filesystem
desktop-file-utils-0.28-5.fc44.x86_64
cmake-data-4.3.0-1.fc44.noarch
rpmdevtools-9.6-14.fc44.noarch
libidn-1.44-1.fc44.x86_64
mercurial-7.2.4-1.fc44.x86_64
emacs-common-30.2-28.fc44.x86_64

But if I try to remove emacs-filesystem it wants to remove a half of my whole system.

a long listing of sudo dnf remove emacs-filesystem command that exceeds this message limit:

Why this emacs-filesystem package is so special and so widely needed? Do I really need it without the Emacs editor installed?

3

The description for emacs-filesystem contains this text

Summary     : Emacs filesystem layout
Description :
This package provides some directories which are required by other
packages that add functionality to Emacs.

The emacs-filesystem packages is built separately from emacs itelf. It provides some directories where various other packages is storing syntax specifications. The entire content of the emacs-filesystem package is

/usr/lib64/emacs                                                          
/usr/lib64/emacs/site-lisp
/usr/share/emacs
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d

which are all directories without regular files.

4

Any package that provides emacs lisp code will depend on the emacs-filesystem package.
desktop-file-utils does exactly that and others.

Easiest to just leave it installed.