Re: dash.el [was: Re: Imports / inclusion of s.el into Emacs]

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 18.05.2020 06:49, Richard Stallman wrote:
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>
>    > I would like to point out, as an author of several packages, that in my
>    > experience having a package in ELPA is _better_ than having it in the core.
>
> Better in which sense?  Do you mean, better for you in maintaining the
> package?

As explained in another email: better discoverability. Better at helping 
the users notice the package.

Simply including a file in the Emacs distro doesn't do much.

> Having the package in the core makes it possible to maintain it in
> sync with Emacs releases.  Having it in GNU ELPA makes it possible to
> release improvements in the package that work for old Emacs releases.
> I think that either one can be valuable in some cases.

The latter is definitely useful. It's also a boon (with :core packages) 
when you want a release a new version, the last Emacs release was a 
month ago, and it's a year or two until the next one.

The former... there are certainly cases when a package is good to have 
in the core (the obvious ones are when we want to turn it on by default).

As far as maintaining them in sync, do you mean the advantage is the 
package can use new APIs, hooks, etc, that are added at the same time 
the change in the package is made? That can certainly be a boon, but the 
very same thing makes keeping the package work with older Emacs more 
difficult.

The packages that require new APIS are almost always new packages 
themselves. So it might help to let them "incubate" inside Emacs, but 
after that the advantages of staying in the core are less obvious (aside 
from keeping compatibility, etc). And such packages can still be 
developed externally, perhaps with somewhat higher overhead.

IME most packages depend on stable interfaces, though.