Re: CVS is the `released version'

[Ryan Yeske]

   There are problems with this that no package system can ever solve: a
   package that is released asynchronously from Emacs runs a high risk to
   become broken by changes in Emacs.  Packages that are released
   together with Emacs are generally coherent with the Emacs core, by
   contrast.

   As long as this is a real problem (and I personally don't see how it
   can be solved, given the high rate of changes in core code), this
   ``biggest benefit'' is actually a myth, IMHO.

I have run emacs-w3m and bbdb across different emacs versions without
problems.  If changes in emacs do result in breakage in a package,
then updating installed packages can be done much more easily than
manually downloading and reinstalling updated packages.

Of course packages that are released together with emacs may not have
this problem, but we are talking about making a convenient way to
deliver third party packages to users.  Perhaps then, this is actually
outside the scope of emacs-devel@, as a package system like the one we
have been discussing doesn't need even need to be a part of emacs.

Ryan