Re: PACKAGE-FEATURES, and hot update of Emacs packages

[Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>]

On 2021-11-28 14:04, Tim Cross wrote:
> While I like the idea of being able to use package version to help
> manage this, the problem is there is no standardisation of package
> version formats. This makes calculation of which version is 
> before/after
> another version unreliable.

Version comparisons are very well defined; but I guess you're referring
to MELPA's horribly-broken approach to versions here?  A test with a
package installed from MELPA confirms that `package-desc-version' and
`package-get-version' do pick up on whatever version MELPA assigned, so
I guess that's unreliable as you say.  Along with my earlier misgivings
about assuming that any given library had been installed as a package in
the first place, I agree that this doesn't seem like a viable approach.

The code itself would include the *real* version number, though, so in
principle I think it would be possible to utilise that; but I think it's
currently only exposed in the .el source.

If the .elc file contained the version number as well, I think that
load-time version-update tracking would become possible?


-Phil