Re: Packages quality

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> I'm also curious what "redundant package" even means in this context. There
> are always many ways to achieve something and usually there's no clear way
> to decide if some approach is much better than the alternatives. Given how
> early we are with NonGNU ELPA I think that concerns about "obsolete" and
> "redundant" packages are quite overdone. 

I don't consider NonGNU ELPA separately from GNU ELPA in this
discussion, and GNU ELPA is just as old as MELPA.

What I'm getting at is that users would benefit from extra info about
the packages, e.g. notions of popularity and health, some lists of
related packages including alternatives.

And it'd be good for us to make efforts at consolidating packages
(i.e. reach out and help package maintainers integrate their new package
with the older one they thought was crap, as happens too often).


        Stefan


> On Thu, Jan 6, 2022, at 4:30 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> > Do we want to collect as many packages as possible, even if the
>> > implementations and practices are sub-optimal, are displaced by
>> > alternative implementations in Emacs or ELPA, etc. or should we try to
>> > restrict the packages to popular, "good citizens" of the Emacs package
>> > space, in an effort to raise the standards and clean up "obsolete" and
>> > "redundant" packages.  It is probably clear that I have an inclination
>> > towards the latter position: Going forward it seems preferable to have
>> > as many useful and idiomatic packages available directly via the ELPAs,
>> > without burdening newcomers with duplicate functionalities.  My
>> > motivation in contributing to NonGNU ELPA is to further this goal.
>> 
>> Note that (Non)GNU ELPA in the long term will inevitably also contain
>> old/redundant/outdated packages unless we go and actively remove such
>> packages (which we haven't done so far).
>> 
>> So, I think if we want to improve the quality, in the long term, the way
>> to do that is not just by restricting which packages we add, but by
>> finding ways to regularly re-assess the quality of packages and coming
>> up with good ways to remove/demote packages based on that (and similarly
>> promote those packages that are currently particularly good).
>> 
>> 
>>         Stefan
>> 
>> 
>>