Re: elpa.gnu.org repository sync with Emacs

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>]

>> What's the difference between this and packages that are bundled, then?
>> The difference is that we know for sure that the upstream maintainer
>> automatically gets an email for each one of our changes (i.e. he is
>> proactively warned of such changes),
> Surely that could be hacked up with a commit script (or the like) that
> would Cc the ";; Author:" line in the files, if that's a thing that we
> want to do.

Yes, that's indeed what I want (I also want it for the trunk, FWIW).

>> and also we know that the package needs to pay attention to backward
>> compatibility, so we have to be more careful with the changes we
>> install there.
> So...  ELPA would be for packages that we want to have readily available
> in Emacs, but that we can't ever easily cut any cruft out of as Emacs
> progresses?

No, not at all.  Just that those packages will often want to support
older Emacsen just like they already do currently when they're not
in ELPA.

> I don't honestly see how this helps either Emacs users

It helps Emacs users because those packages are easier to install than
having to go to emacswiki, download the file(s), tweak their .emacs, ...

> or people who hack on Emacs.

It reduces the pressure to bundle each and every package with Emacs.
It provides a place to keep "copyright ready code", that we can bundle in
Emacs if/when we decide it's a good idea.
A few other such reasons.

Regarding moving stuff from ELPA into Emacs, there's also the idea that
some packages could be moved out of Emacs into ELPA, but come bundled
into the Emacs release tarball.  Gnus and Org would seem like good
candidates for that, although I'm still not sure whether that's
a good idea.


        Stefan