Re: Reconsider defaults for use-package-vc-prefer-newest

["Martin Edstrom" <meedstrom@runbox.eu>]

> Please forgive me if I misunderstand the situation, but I wonder if it
> wouldn't be possible to suggest a patch that leaves the conservative
> default but detects the potential "catastrophe" and warns the user?
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Chad

The "catastrophe" would be a situation such as:

- In 2020, Developer releases Package for the first time
- In 2021, Developer tires of bumping Package-Version, leaves it at 0.9
- In 2024, Package is now at 2.2 according to the convenient git/hg tag, or maybe it has no official version beyond just "0.9.0.50-git"
- User installs Package using (use-package :vc)
- User gets the version from 2021
- It doesn't seem to work
- 10 such users give up on Package
- The 11th user files the bug reports
- Bug reports are strange and make no sense
- User and Developer finally figure out that it's because the user used (use-package :vc) which fetched the 2021 version

To counteract this would amount to a heuristic that looks up the package repository online and compares the age of recent commits with the commit fetched by (use-package :vc), but what is the threshold that you would set to trigger the warning? I don't think it is realistically doable.