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

[Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>]

On 4/19/2023 1:57 PM, João Távora wrote:
> But that doesn't change anything.  In Emacs 26/27/28 from scratch
> package-install and use-package _will_ rev up Eglot to whatever is the
> newest version.  In Emacs 29 it won't.

But in that case, the user simply ends up with, at best, whatever 
version of Eglot was current at the time they ran Emacs with their 
config for the first time on that machine. The status quo is already 
that users are likely on an older version of Eglot, unless they wipe 
their elpa/ directory regularly (which seems an awkward way to update 
your packages to me).

> In fact deleting Eglot and restarting Emacs the config run again is what
> I suppose the most common upgrade method (since there is no
> package-update in Emacs 28).

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I just use the *Packages* buffer 
and 'package-menu-mark-upgrades' (bound to "U"). That works on older 
Emacsen too. In 29, 'package-update' would make it easier to update a 
single package though, and 'package-update-all' provides a programmatic 
way to do what I do interactively in 28.

(Though now I wonder why we use both "update" and "upgrade"...)

> Other than that, think CI scripts, dockerfiles, VMs, or just the
> casual user who trashes the packages dir to get a fresh set when
> looking for a bug (like I do, and multiple people I've interacted with).

If a user hasn't done anything to specify the release channel they want, 
then I think the current behavior is correct. "(package-install 'eglot)" 
just means "make sure I have Eglot". However, if the user pinned Eglot 
to GNU ELPA, I think it would make some sense for 'package-install' to 
install Eglot from GNU ELPA (i.e. it now means "make sure I have Eglot 
*from GNU ELPA*").

I know this isn't automatic; a user would need to pin Eglot to GNU ELPA 
to get this behavior, but it's fairly easy to do. use-package already 
supports pinning as well. We'd just need to tweak 'package-install' and 
'use-package :ensure' to handle pinning as described above.