Re: Why not include all ELPA packages in an Emacs release?

[Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>]

Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org> writes:

> FWIW, I'd rather move more stuff from core to ELPA and add mechanics to
> install from ELPA easily.  use-package was one such thing but I imagine
> a mechanism that would provide package suggestions, e.g., like asking a
> user to install toml-mode when finding a toml file for the first time,
> or suggesting to install calc or calculator when typing calc at the M-x
> prompt...

Definitely not.  calc-mode is one of those packages that are intimately
connected to functionality provided in core, and it would be a
tremendous inconvenience if Emacs developers were required to install
changes in more than one repository when the next core change with
far-reaching consequences, such as bignums had, comes along.  Or, to
give another example, during the development of the Android port, it was
necessary to apply mechanical modifications to plenty of code in core to
adapt it to Android environments, and this task would most probably have
remained unfinished, with respect to to such packages as calc, if they
had been extracted to independent repositories and were only distributed
in release tarballs.

I think it is generally counterproductive to deny or impair our control
over the distribution and maintenance of packages, whether they be also
published on ELPA or not.  As no one has suggested that the quantity of
code being maintained in the repository now has become an intolerable
burden, let us not invent imaginary problems and, with them, paralyzing
solutions.