The patch seems fine to me, but I'm a bit skeptical about the whole rolling releases idea in general - e.g. should something like a change to the docs really result in a new release? How hard it is for people to actually update version timestamps themselves or to just stick to the *-devel repos if they don't want to cut releases?

How much was the demand for something like this in general? I can't think of any major Emacs package that does rolling releases.

On Sun, Oct 23, 2022, at 7:47 AM, Protesilaos Stavrou wrote:
> > 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".
> 
> 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")))
> 
> -- 
> Protesilaos Stavrou
> https://protesilaos.com
> 
>