ELPA and core services

[John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>]

>>>>> Christopher Schmidt <christopher@ch.ristopher.com> writes:

> I do not agree with GNU ELPA not being applicable for core services.  I
> think every single package that is not absolutely necessary for running a
> bare Emacs should be moved to GNU ELPA.

Please, please no.  I use lots of Emacsen on lots of machines, and only a few
have my configuration copied over.  Please don't turn unconfigured Emacsen
into brain-dead zombies of little value.  I rely on the fact that Eshell
exists on every Windows machine that has Emacs.  And not all of these have a
network connection for me to even use ELPA, if that company's web proxy would
even allow it.

I think you may be considering this issue only from the
single-power-user-with-net-access point of view.

> On top of that, IMO every single core package should have a copy on GNU ELPA
> so one can to overwrite the native GNU Emacs one with the one from GNU ELPA.
> This would decouple all packages from the Emacs release cycle and allow bug
> fixes to be distributed instantly.

Now, this I agree with completely.  ELPA overrides is a great idea, and I
think it could accelerate development -- as long as inter-package version
dependencies are managed.  If the newest Gnus suddenly depends on the the
newest something-else, that something-else should be installed/updated along
with it automatically.

John