Re: Allowing rolling release packages on ELPA

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com> writes:

>> From: Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>
>> Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2022 10:31:35 +0000
>>
>> I have heard from people who prefer a rolling release model for their
>> packages, 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.  The following patch would enable ELPA
>> devel-like versioning on ELPA, if enabled with a :rolling-release
>> property.  WDYT?
>
> Not a comment on the patch, but the idea behind it: I find the current
> arrangement between GNU ELPA and GNU-devel ELPA to give me the best of
> both worlds.  Users who need rolling releases can opt in to the "devel"
> version: this has the upside of explicitly acknowledging that the
> package is not marked as "stable".

For the record, I agree that stable by default is preferable.  But I
actually am not a fan of promoting the usage of the "devel" archives,
as not all package developers (like me) want to ensure that the current
state of the default branch is usable.  It has happened more than once
to me that I have pushed a few commits that haven't been properly tested
at the end of the day, so that I can fetch that state from whatever
device I would be working on later, and having people complain to me
that this or that is broken.

All this being said, this has nothing to do with the motivation behind
the patch.  An example where a package developer has a mentality
opposite to mine can be found here[0].  He claims that all commits are
stable and usable, so the requirement to bump the version tag manually
would be an unnecessary burden.

[0] https://github.com/greghendershott/racket-mode/issues/389

> The user can also arrange the 'package-archive-priorities' to choose
> gnu-devel by default.  And there is also 'package-pinned-packages' in
> case they want a different archive for a given package. Example from my
> init file where I prioritise regular GNU ELPA:
>
>     (setq package-pinned-packages
>           '((cursory . "elpa-devel")
>             (denote . "elpa-devel")
>             (ef-themes . "elpa-devel")
>             (fontaine . "elpa-devel")
>             (lin . "elpa-devel")
>             (logos . "elpa-devel")
>             (pulsar . "elpa-devel")
>             (tmr . "elpa-devel")))

I don't understand the detour through ELPA-devel is necessary, if I
would suppose that you have the package sources available locally?