Re: elpa.gnu.org policy

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:01:14 +0100 Lluís <xscript@gmx.net> wrote: 

L> Ted Zlatanov writes:
>> Maybe elpa.gnu.org should publish a repository for each Emacs release,
>> enabled by default in that release:

>> All 24.x releases:
>> elpa.gnu.org/packages-24

>> 24.1 only:
>> elpa.gnu.org/packages-24.1

>> 24.2 only:
>> elpa.gnu.org/packages-24.2

>> ...

>> All releases:
>> elpa.gnu.org/packages

L> But package.el supports version dependencies, right? Then package
L> developers should set that accordingly (both lower and upper version
L> bounds, if necessary).

L> Using version-specific repositories requires just that same work of
L> checking compatibility.

(these are just my ideas, not necessarily the solution)

Package developers tell us some of this, but elpa.gnu.org needs to have
a way of freezing package versions.  Otherwise any new package version
has the potential to break everyone with an older Emacs version.  Just
as with the regular Emacs, we can backport fixes but at least we're
guaranteed that we won't have surprises due to an upgrade.

So packages will start in the global repository.  But when Emacs changes
or the maintainer tells us or we get bug reports, we'll look for
affected packages and branch them accordingly.

Ted