To be clear - I'm not arguing against the inclusion of this. :-) Assuming the package maintainers know what they are doing, that'd be perfectly fine by me. 

> Not quite, the time stamp is appended to the regular version number.

Well, normally there's no "regular version" when you're doing rolling releases. If there is - those would not be rolling releases, but snapshots between regular releases. I know that MELPA preserves the original version, but I think that doesn't make sense for a real rolling release. 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022, at 9:30 AM, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
> "Bozhidar Batsov" <bozhidar@batsov.dev> writes:
> 
> > Instead of setting version numbers manually (e.g. 0.1, 0.2) upon
> > release time, with rolling releases every change (commit) pushed
> > upstream results automatically in a new release and a version bump,
> > with the version being a timestamp.  
> 
> Not quite, the time stamp is appended to the regular version number.
> 
> >                                      E.g. if I push 3 commits one day
> > with some time between them this will result in 3 releases. I think
> > it's a great approach for snapshot (devel) repos, but I'm not so sure
> > about "stable" repos, as it kinda of implies that the author will
> > never have their project in an inconsistent state (e.g. halfway
> > towards a new feature).
> 
> Right, so it would only be used whenever a package author prefers that
> method of development.
> 
> > This approach was made popular by https://melpa.org/ 
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 25, 2022, at 11:14 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> >> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> >> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> >> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> >> 
> >>   > I have heard from people who prefer a rolling release model for their
> >>   > packages,
> >> 
> >> Can you explain what that means, concretely?  How is t different from
> >> what we do now?
> 
> It is currently necessary to bump the version tag in the package header
> to indicate that a release is to be made.  If a package specification
> has a non-nil :rolling-release tag, then this is done whenever the
> repository is synchronised.
> 
> >>               and requested that their packages not be added for {Non,}GNU
> >>   > ELPA if they would have to update the version header manually,
> >>   > presumably on every commit.
> >> 
> >> Is this something we would _want_ to do?  What would its implications
> >> be for Emacs?
> 
> It wouldn't affect Emacs, just packages that request this kind of
> release management.
> 
> >> We might decide to support their style of release, or decide not to
> >> include their packages in NonGNU ELPA, or we might come up with
> >> another solution.  I don't know what's best.  But I'm sure we should
> >> think about that before we decide.
> 
> If the only issue a package has is that it is developed using a "rolling
> release" model, it would be nonsensical for us to not accommodate the
> request and reject a (perhaps popular) package on that ground.
>