Re: Stability of core packages (was: Not easy at all to upgrade :core packages like Eglot)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:56:58 -0700
> Cc: joaotavora@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>
> 
> On 4/18/2023 5:57 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > So this again goes back to the main issue: how should the stability
> > considerations affect development of core packages and their
> > "stability gradation"?
> 
> It sounds to me like there are 3 or 4 levels (depending on how you count):
> 
> * Stable: the version of a package included in the latest Emacs tarball
> * Latest: the latest version on GNU ELPA (etc)
> * Devel: the latest version on GNU-devel ELPA (etc)

I think we need only two.  Stable can move to the next version, since
packages are released more frequently than Emacs.

> However, this runs into the problem João saw: if your package (e.g. 
> Eglot) would strongly benefit from requiring a newer version of a 
> dependency (ElDoc), what should you do? Currently, the only options are 
> a) do nothing and let users have a worse experience or b) make the user 
> upgrade the dependency too, even if they don't particularly want it. 
> Neither solution seems ideal to me.

How is this different from what we have in Emacs?  An exciting new
feature is sometimes deferred to the next major release if the release
branch is close enough to a release.  There's nothing new here, just
the fact that sometimes useful new features could destabilize Emacs,
so one needs to choose which one it wants more.

> One alternative would be for packages to be able to *recommend* 
> dependencies. Then, Eglot could recommend newer versions of ElDoc, but 
> they wouldn't actually be required.

This is probably needed, but it requires non-trivial support from
package.el, to let informed users select the updates that fit their
stability requirements and feature needs.