Re: ELPA and older emacs package updates

[Stefan Monnier]

> Just found out about ELPA and I think it's great. However, would it be
> possible to also add packages to ELPA that's introduced in later Emacs
> versions?

We do do that for some packages, yes.

> E.g. I'm currently on my distribution-packaged version of Emacs 25,
> but would really like to use the mhtml-mode introduced in Emacs 26.
> Wouldn't it make sense to add these type of packages in ELPA as well
> for all the older Emacs versions out there?

I'd be happy to make such a package, but I have the impression that
mhtml-mode.el won't work as-is in Emacs-25 because it relies on changes to
html-mode, css-mode, ...

Maybe we can make it work by exporting some of Emacs's builtin packages
(like css-mode.el and html-mode.el) to GNU ELPA and then to export
mhtml-mode.el as well, with dependencies on those newer versions.

Could you try it on your Emacs-25?  I.e. take Emacs-26's mhtml-mode.el
see if it works, if it doesn't see if copying Emacs-26's css-mode.el or
html-mode.el (or other) improves things...

Once you found a set of files that do work, we can see about making
the corresponding packages.


        Stefan