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

[John Yates]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 1:03 PM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Specifically, users of Emacs 28 and older, who had Eglot installed,
> and expect Eglot to be automatically updated upon Emacs startup
> whenever a new Eglot version is available, will now have their
> expectations broken after they upgrade to Emacs 29, because Eglot is
> now a built-in package, and package.el won't by default upgrade a
> built-in package.
>
> OTOH, the proposal to change package.el so it automatically updates
> built-in packages as well would break the workflows of people who
> don't expect built-in packages to be updated: they would suddenly see
> packages like ElDoc or Xref or Project (and others) being updated
> automatically at startup instead of staying at the version shipped
> with Emacs.

Full disclosure: jumping in without having read much of the prior thread.

Perhaps package.el should allow a user to declare whether (s)he wants
a stable experience or a "rolling release" experience.  In that way the
issue is no longer a function of whether a package is :core or not.

My initial thought was that this would be a single, global toggle.  But I can
also imagine more granular choices (stable, rolling or unspecified) per
package archive and per individual package.