Re: emacs-29 44ebd9cbd56 2/2: Eglot: explain how to update Eglot in manual (bug#62720)

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 28/04/2023 21:12, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
> Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev> writes:
>
> > On 28/04/2023 17:25, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
> > > Eli Zaretskii<eliz@gnu.org>  writes:
> > >
> > > > > Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2023 02:52:56 +0300
> > > > > From: Dmitry Gutov<dmitry@gutov.dev>
> > > > >
> > > > > Hi!
> > > > >
> > > > > On 28/04/2023 02:39, João Távora wrote:
> > > > > >        * lisp/progmodes/eglot.el (eglot-update): New command.
> > > > > Should it be called eglot-upgrade now as well?
> > > > No, it should be removed.
> > > 1+
> >
> > This doesn't sound very constructive at this point.
>
> It is difficult to be constructive here.  I believe that the long-term
> complications/confusion of introducing this kind of a command instead of
> instructing users on Emacs 29 to update a package like Eglot manually is
> not worth it, while others do.  These matters are difficult to quantify,
> so we cannot reach a consensus by pointing to some objective reality,
> and instead of have to fall back on personal impressions and
> experiences.  I have a hunch that João as the maintainer of Eglot is
> over-exposed to people who are interested in having the absolutely
> newest version so they can make use of the absolutely newest features,
> while most people I know, personally or online, that make use of Eglot
> barley bother to configure it at all (I consider that to be one of the
> major setting points for the package, btw).  Comparing other
> configurations I have seen online, I actually think that what I have in
> my init.el is a lot:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> (setup eglot
>    (setopt eglot-autoshutdown t
>            eglot-extend-to-xref t
>            eldoc-echo-area-use-multiline-p nil
>            eldoc-idle-delay 0.1)
>    (:bind "C-c a" #'eglot-code-actions
>           "C-c z" #'eglot-format
>           "C-c r" #'eglot-rename)
>    (:unbind [remap display-local-help]))
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

But that's the thing: upgrading to a recent version of Eglot is not only 
for the more advanced user. Those can easily go the 'M-x list-packages 
C-s eglot i x' route.

It is those who do the minimum customization and/or are just introduced 
to Emacs, can miss out with more likelihood the longer the steps to 
upgrade Eglot are going to be.

The newest version of Eglot is not just the latest shiny, it's also the 
most recent mapping of modes to language servers, for example. Or 
mapping of Emacs features to LSP capabilities. And Emacs 29 will 
continue to be installed and used 3-5-7 years after its release, where 
some of this stuff will definitely get outdated. If we fixed 
package-upgrade, that could be easy enough, but 'M-x eglot-upgrade' can 
be a comparable alternative.

> Just thinking about introducing a command that we right-now plan to
> deprecate by the next release is not something I look forward to.

It would probably be deprecated only several major versions later.

> Even
> just promoting the concept of having a package-specific upgrade command
> is something I am a afraid of (it took for ages for third-party packages
> to stop adding pointless `foo-version' commands).  And I might have
> missed something here, but none of this would tackle the "central" issue
> of use-package not installing the newest version of a package if the
> package is already built-in, but hasn't yet been installed before.

I don't know if it's "central": according to the docs, (use-package 
eglot :ensure t) is only meant to ensure that Eglot is installed. 
Whether that means the very latest version at the time the configuration 
is first run, or not, seems a matter of opinion.