Re: ELPA policy

[Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com>]

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

> If that's the case, it changes my thoughts on what needs to be in core, and
> what should be in ELPA. Until now I was thinking ELPA required Internet
> access; but if there are parts of ELPA that "come in the box", then I'd like
> to see more packages there.

I think we ought to clarify what we're talking about here.

- There are packages that are offered only on Elpa. For these you need
  an internet connection and you need to `M-x package-install' them.

- There are packages that are offered both on Elpa and Emacs. These
  are just like any other core package (no connection and no
  package-install necessary).

  The difference is that users can get access to new versions from Elpa
  without having to wait for the next Emacs release. The disadvantage
  here is code duplication, as someone needs to make sure that any bug
  fixes applied on the Emacs side also get applied on the Elpa side (and
  vice versa).

  Current examples of this are seq.el and let-alist.

- Then there's a third option. I only found this out recently while
  browsing the `externals-list' file on Elpa, and it was apparently
  implemented by Fabián in September.

  You can configure Elpa to (while building) copy the most recent
  version of an packages from the Emacs repository. IIUC, this would
  have the same effect as the previous option, except no code
  duplication. The thing is: no packages seem to be using this, and it's
  only documented in the comments of that file (though I've verified
  that there's indeed code to implement this).

Fabián, is this feature complete?