ELPA and older emacs package updates

ELPA and older emacs package updates

[Jakob Viketoft]

Hello,

Just found out about ELPA and I think it's great. However, would it be possible to also add packages to ELPA that's introduced in later Emacs versions? E.g. I'm currently on my distribution-packaged version of Emacs 25, but would really like to use the mhtml-mode introduced in Emacs 26. Wouldn't it make sense to add these type of packages in ELPA as well for all the older Emacs versions out there?

Best regards,

       /Jakob

Re: ELPA and older emacs package updates

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi!

On 26.11.2018 11:24, Jakob Viketoft wrote:

> Just found out about ELPA and I think it's great. However, would it be possible to also add packages to ELPA that's introduced in later Emacs versions? E.g. I'm currently on my distribution-packaged version of Emacs 25, but would really like to use the mhtml-mode introduced in Emacs 26. Wouldn't it make sense to add these type of packages in ELPA as well for all the older Emacs versions out there?

Sometimes we can do that, but IIRC mhtml-mode depends on the newer 
versions of several built-in packages, so it's a more difficult case.

Re: ELPA and older emacs package updates

[Stefan Monnier]

> Just found out about ELPA and I think it's great. However, would it be
> possible to also add packages to ELPA that's introduced in later Emacs
> versions?

We do do that for some packages, yes.

> E.g. I'm currently on my distribution-packaged version of Emacs 25,
> but would really like to use the mhtml-mode introduced in Emacs 26.
> Wouldn't it make sense to add these type of packages in ELPA as well
> for all the older Emacs versions out there?

I'd be happy to make such a package, but I have the impression that
mhtml-mode.el won't work as-is in Emacs-25 because it relies on changes to
html-mode, css-mode, ...

Maybe we can make it work by exporting some of Emacs's builtin packages
(like css-mode.el and html-mode.el) to GNU ELPA and then to export
mhtml-mode.el as well, with dependencies on those newer versions.

Could you try it on your Emacs-25?  I.e. take Emacs-26's mhtml-mode.el
see if it works, if it doesn't see if copying Emacs-26's css-mode.el or
html-mode.el (or other) improves things...

Once you found a set of files that do work, we can see about making
the corresponding packages.


        Stefan

Re: ELPA and older emacs package updates

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 26.11.2018 16:15, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> I'd be happy to make such a package, but I have the impression that
> mhtml-mode.el won't work as-is in Emacs-25 because it relies on changes to
> html-mode, css-mode, ...

prog-mode.el too.