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

[João Távora]

[ I think everything has already been said in this discussion, so let me
try to answer two-in-one mails to minimize chatter. ]

PK> experiences.  I have a hunch that João as the maintainer of Eglot is
PK> over-exposed to people who are interested in having the absolutely
PK> newest version so they can make use of the absolutely newest
PK> features,

I don't know what that means.  I am exposed to the users I am exposed
to, and there seem to be a lot of them.  A lot of reports and
conversations over here and over at GitHub.  I spend my time with them,
very often having to guess things.  If I can at least minimize the time
wasted agreeing on what Eglot version is being used or how to get the
newest bugfix/feature, I do want that.

PK> I have in my init.el is a lot:
PK> eldoc-echo-area-use-multiline-p nil

If you upgrade Eglot, you probably won't need this customization ;-)

DG> some of this stuff will definitely get outdated. If we fixed
DG> package-upgrade, that could be easy enough, but 'M-x eglot-upgrade'
DG> can be a comparable alternative.
PK>> Just thinking about introducing a command that we right-now plan to
PK>> deprecate by the next release is not something I look forward to.
DG> It would probably be deprecated only several major versions later.

Dmitry is right.

An interesting direction would be to fix package-upgrade in Emacs 29 &
make package.el a self-updating :core package itself.  But the former
has been ruled out and the latter is also looking murky.  Are there
other more complicated ways to achieve this?  Of course, and
list-packages was the first workaround listed by me when I opened
bug#62720.  But the menu is fraught with its own problems (slow,
complicated and sometimes downright broken by some accounts).

eglot-update _not_ the prettiest option, but it's the best _possible_
option which guarantees consistency across Emacs versions.  I've
exhausted my attempts to steer this discussion in other directions.

So eglot-update it is.  I buy the consistency argument, I do, but there
are plenty of <package>-version and <package>-bug too in the Emacs tree
There is even tramp-recompile-elpa.  None of this is deprecated.  Which
just means maintainters need things to work foremost before wanting them
to be pretty.

João