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

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2023 12:35:15 -0700
> Cc: arne_bab@web.de, joaotavora@gmail.com, dmitry@gutov.dev,
>  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>
> 
> > But if this is the scenario, then there's no problem, AFAIU what you
> > are saying.  So what exactly would you like to add to this discussion?
> 
> Two main things (once I hear back from João to confirm):
> 
> 1) If there are any package-upgrade actions that *don't* work in the way 
> I described, we should fix them, using the behavior of 
> 'package-menu-mark-upgrades' for guidance. As far as I can tell, that's 
> the behavior everyone wants, but there could be other scenarios where it 
> does something else.
> 
> 2) More-generally, there's the question of "stability gradations". 
> Elsewhere, you suggested listing these in the *Packages* buffer with 
> values like "alpha", "current", "stable", etc. We can already do 
> something similar to this with additional package archives (e.g. GNU 
> ELPA vs GNU-devel ELPA). However, package.el doesn't automatically keep 
> track of which channel you used to install a package, so you have to go 
> through a fair amount of extra effort to pin your packages to particular 
> release channels.
> 
> I think (1) is the immediate concern though, and it might be best to 
> have a resolution for that before going too far into general solutions 
> like (2).

These are serious issues we need to discuss and solve.  But they will
probably require significant changes in package.el, and so are stuff
for Emacs 30, not for the emacs-29 branch.