Re: Stability of core packages (was: Not easy at all to upgrade :core packages like Eglot)

[João Távora]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 2:44 PM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> I envisioned seeing something like
>
>   eglot       2.01    alpha      gnu   The Emacs Client for LSP servers
>   eglot       1.20    current    gnu   The Emacs Client for LSP servers
>   eglot       1.15    stable     gnu   The Emacs Client for LSP servers
>   eglot       1.14    previous   gnu   The Emacs Client for LSP servers
>   eglot       1.12    built-in   gnu   The Emacs Client for LSP servers
>
> where the 3rd column is the "stability gradation" I had in mind.
>
> I also envisioned some user option, say, package-preferred-stabilty,
> which users could set to a value such as 'stable', and then package.el
> will only automatically update a package to a newer version when the
> new version satisfies the stability criteria per the value of that
> option.
>
> > Then explain what you want to do with that stability gradation
> > in Emacs (if anything, perhaps you just want to show it).
>
> If the above doesn't explain this, I don't think I understand the
> question.

Thank you, it explains what you mean.  Seems like you want distribution
channels like Debian has.  No objection here, but IMO seems to be
solving problems that I've never personally seen happening in
Emacs packages.  And it also seems like a lot of work.

I really can't remember seeing a bug report where someone was
discontent with an upgrade of some package to a higher version
that was accidently buggy, let alone a "furtive" upgrade related to
dependencies.  Doesn't mean they don't exist, I've just never seen
them.

I remember quite well that upgrading versions of dependencies _fixes_
bugs.  One of the first code packages was cl-lib and its first versions
were off, the later versions were progressively better.

> What do you mean by "do with that in Emacs"?

I meant how is Emacs's code to react to this gradation.  You've more
or less suggested that "package-preferred-stability" would be
consulted by package-install to know which one to pick, so that also
answers my question.

João