Re: Tramp as ELPA package

[Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> To the extent that the *-pre aren't distributed IIUC, I'm not sure what
> problem would be caused by simply keeping the version string at "2.4.0"
> instead of "2.4.1-pre".

Between "2.4.0" and "2.4.1", there is half-a-year. Very likely, I would
like to release error fixes in the time between.

And for debugging purposes, it is important whether somebody uses a
Tramp release like "2.4.0", or something taken from a repository, named
"2.4.1-pre". In the latter case, I must be more careful to understand,
which Tramp file versions are used.

>>   Maybe we need an intermediate release string as the MELPA packages
>>   have: add a time stamp in the Version: header of tramp.el *only* in
>>   the Emacs repository, whenever a new version of Tramp shall appear as
>>   package, like 2.4.1.pre.20180826. This shouldn't be done
>>   automatically, by intention only. An automatic release of Tramp as
>>   ELPA package might be too frequent, I fear.
>
> I don't understand: GNU ELPA packages are only created when the
> Version: changes, so it's only as frequent as you choose it to be.

That's the problem. If I keep the release scheme "2.4.0", 2.4.1", ...,
there's a release every half-a-year. I don't want to change this
timing, because it is always a several-days effort for a release. I do
run heavy regression tests prior the release, for example.

But maybe we shall indeed use something like a Tramp ELPA package
release scheme, with something like "2.4.0.1", "2.4.0.2", ..., without
all the effort to make a "real" release as tarball, as it should still
happen.

>> * Several Tramp versions. I maintain several Tramp versions in parallel,
>>   currently 2.3.4 and 2.4.1.  I'm not confident that 2.4.1 shall be the
>>   ELPA package today, because new features will be added here, and it is
>>   kind of unstable, therefore.  I believe, 2.3.4 would be better suited
>>   for all users *not* running Emacs 27.0.50.  Users running Emacs 27.0.50
>>   do not need Tramp as ELPA package, because it is always synced with
>>   the Emacs repository.  How do we manage this?
>
> We don't.  Org-mode is in the same situation.
>
> All other packages (including Emacs itself, BTW) far only have one
> "active" release, basically.

No. Emacs has the master branch, and the emacs-26 branch. I would call
both "active".

> IIUC the multiple-releases dance is mostly out-of-fashion in these days
> of "DevOps".

I don't understand what you mean with this. (And yes, I know what DevOps
means in general.)

>> * Providing Tramp documentation. IIUC, ELPA packages could contain
>>   *.texi and *.info files, but they are not propagated to the
>>   users. This shall be enhanced, because new features of Tramp are
>>   reflected there.
>
> The .info files are "propagated to the users", but the .texi files
> indeed are currently left unused.

As Tom reminded me, it requires to add a proper "dir" file to the Tramp
ELPA package. Since it would be a core package, I ave no idea where this
file to take from.

>         Stefan

Best regrads, Michael.