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

[Jim Porter]

On 4/19/2023 10:03 AM, Eli Zaretskii 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.

I have some thoughts on this but before I go further, I want to be sure 
I understand the problem. How is the user upgrading their packages in 
this scenario? I installed Eglot 1.14 on Emacs 28 and then tried loading 
up Emacs 29. Then I did the following:

1. Add gnu-devel to 'package-archives' (this way, I can be sure there's 
a newer Eglot to upgrade to in one of the archives)
2. M-x list-packages
3. U  ;; package-menu-mark-upgrades
4. x  ;; package-menu-execute

When Emacs tells me what packages it will upgrade, Eglot is in the list. 
However, ERC (which is in ELPA, but I didn't install via package.el) is 
*not* in the list. Isn't this the behavior we want?[1]

[1] For now, ignore the part where this upgrade changes where we get 
Eglot from GNU ELPA to GNU-devel ELPA. (I think this should be fixed, 
but I don't think it poses an immediate issue for Eglot's problem, since 
Emacs doesn't enable GNU-devel by default.)