Possible improvements in packaging (was: Reconsider defaults for use-package-vc-prefer-newest)

[Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com>]

"Martin Edström" <meedstrom@runbox.eu> writes:

> Maybe it's not the end of the world that devs who want pure "rolling
> releases" are forced to adopt some sort of automated toolchain that
> pretends to cut releases for every commit, or insert a warning message
> to their users to upgrade to the master branch.

I believe that users benefit from installing the "recommended" version.
However, what that is can vary from package to package as well as from
user to user.

Ideally, upstream would provide sufficient information for different
users to be able to decide what is best for their needs.

Part of that information, which today isn't explicitly captured
anywhere, is the release model that is being followed.  If the package
spec allowed for this to be captured and package authors / maintainers
started using it, I believe it would be helpful.  Regardless, having
package authors / maintainers explicitly specify this in any way would
be an improvement.

Additionally, it is, perhaps, not that well known that while MELPA
Stable ELPA uses tags, GNU ELPA and NonGNU ELPA use the version
specified in the package header.  If there were some way to distinguish
between these (and/or when these versions aren't consistent), that too
would be helpful (IMO).  To its credit, MELPA (as opposed to MELPA
Stable) makes it quite clear (based on the assigned versions) that it's
using an altogether different way of versioning.

-- 
Suhail