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

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2023 11:22:10 -0700
> Cc: joaotavora@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>
> 
> On 4/19/2023 5:47 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Also, does package.el support "downgrading" to the bundled version?
> > Did anyone actually try that?  In particular, what happens with the
> > dependencies the user upgraded together with the package being
> > "uninstalled", due to the minimum requirements of that package?
> 
> I've done this in the past and everything works pretty much as expected 
> from my recollection: you can uninstall a package that you got from 
> ELPA, so afterwards, you'd just get the bundled version (you might need 
> to restart; I always do).
> 
> In addition, any automatically-installed dependent packages are marked 
> with the status "dependency". You can remove no-longer-needed deps via 
> 'package-autoremove'. When uninstalling a package interactively in the 
> *Packages* buffer, it will even suggest that you remove unneeded deps 
> when appropriate (see 'package-menu-execute').

IMO, downgrading to the bundled version should be much simpler and by
default should remove all the dependencies without asking and without
any need for manual user actions.

In any case, I don't think this use case was considered or tried
enough for us to consider it a solved issue.  I'm quite sure there's
more here than meets the eye, simply because this is rarely if ever
done.