Re: Request to add Package to GNU ELPA

[Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoul.li>]

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

>> I am hoping that someone would take charge of Package on Emacs' side,
>> and bring some new momentum to its development.  You would be a good
>> candidate for that. ;D
>
> I am glad to help where I can (e.g. making sure that package.el can be
> distributed on ELPA), but I don't know exactly what you have in mind
> with the other changes so I would rather let you tackle those issues.

Thanks.  Once it is on ELPA, I can start propose backward compatible
patches, and so can others.

>>>> I had a look at vc-clone and a few vc-*-clone.  They seem trivial
>>>> enough to backport, either as part of Compat or in package-vc.el.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> I assume that means "well it may *seem* that way, but if you are the one
>> actually doing the work...".  I know the feeling.  oO
>
> I am not sure what you are talking about here?
>
>
> [...]

I was speculating on the meaning of the initial "[...]".

Make of that what you want [...] ;P

> But otherwise I would just try and avoid the need to force users to
> upgrade.  Upgrading should be incentivized with the advantages of doing
> so, not the issues of (perhaps unconsciously) holding back.

Sounds good.

>> I would like to use a format that not only supported "pre-releases" but
>> also "post-releases".  Debian uses "post-releases" to implement
>> "debian-revision" [1]; we could use it to separate the "timestamp" part
>> from "latest released upstream version" part, in snapshot release
>> version strings. [...]
>
> I cannot comment on this, but "post-releases" (as opposed to
> "pre-releases") sounds like just another entry in `version-regexp-alist'?

Unfortunately no.  You cannot encode both pre- and post-releases using a
flat list of integers only.  (Unless you make one of them magical, but
then you would better use a magical non-integer; which is exactly what I
plan to do).  I'll propose a patch to add nearly backward compatible
support.

> So to summarise, I think an approximate plan would be useful:
>
> 1. Update package.el to be published on ELPA
> 2. (Optional) Update package-vc.el to be published on ELPA
> 3. Specify and implement a new package-archives format
> 4. Update package archives to generate the new archive format
>
> Anything I am forgetting?

I don't think so.

Well, it's "to ALSO generate the new archive format".