Re: On "next" packages and related confusions.

[Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Mon, 11 Nov 2024 at 15:10, Divya Ranjan <divya@subvertising.org> wrote:

> As someone who=E2=80=99s been recently involved in packaging some
> software for GNU Guix I’m confused with certain choices, mostly with
> the [package]-next category. What should these next packages be? "More
> recent" than the non-next package? If so, how much more recent? One
> release ahead?

There is no rule, to my knowledge.

I think the idea is:

 1. Update the package when possible.

 2. When the update is non-desirable because it leads to a world-rebuild
    or ecosystem world-rebuild, we provide some -next version.

In other words, if it=E2=80=99s not clear for you when the package needs to=
 be
under the -next category then it means it does not need :-) thus it=E2=80=
=99s a
regular update.

More recent means somehow new significant release. A good rule of thumb
that I use for what mean =E2=80=9Csignificant=E2=80=9C: a) this new release=
 fixes a
well-known security bug and b) I highly need and I cannot live without
one of the feature that the new release provides.

> None of the above options seem to satisfy, emacs-next does not follow
> the latest master, but it further away than one release from the
> stable. So what exactly does emacs-next follow for being updated?

About emacs-next specifically, well, the question is addressed to Emacs
team, right?  Hum, in case they are CC.


Cheers,
simon