Re: [O] Bleeding edge in elpa

[T.F. Torrey]

Achim Gratz <address@hidden> writes:

> The version of package manager that people most likely use today always
> choses the latest version from _any_ archive available when you update.
> You can't tell it to consider some archive more authoritative than
> another or that it should stick with whatever source archive the package
> was originally installed from.

Of course.  My explanation was worded poorly, because instead of
sleeping I was wasting my time supporting someone else's request to be
able to get the latest version of Org via ELPA.

>> The current daily builds are here:
> […]
>
> That sort of contorsionist gymnastics defeats the whole point of having
> a package manager in the first place.  If every package would have to do
> that we'd all end up juggling dozens of archives in our config files.

The guidance for using Org via ELPA is already to "add the
Orgmode.org/elpa archive" (paraphrased).  Changing that to "add
Orgmode.org/elpa-stable for the stable version or
Orgmode.org/elpa-unstable for the bleeding edge version" is suddenly
contortionist gymnastics?  Really?  Compared to using git?

>> If the next version of Emacs breaks Org out of core into the GNU ELPA
>> package archive, things can be even easier:  Keep the stable version in
>> the GNU package archive, and keep the unstable version in the archive on
>> the orgmode.org server.
>
> I wouldn't hold my breath.  At the moment that mechanism by which to do
> that is certainly not in place and there's no agreement on what it
> should look like.

Agreement or not, something will be done.  Already the mechanisms are in
place that put the maint version in both locations.  The biggest
obstacle I to this that I see is that developers tend to hate the
package manager and love git.

>> (And personally, I think the "contrib" parts should either be merged
>> into the core or split into separate packages, but that's another can of
>> worms.)
>
> if you want to move things into core, clean those files up, create tests
> and get the copyrights assignmed to the FSF by their authors and propose
> their inclusion.
>
> If you want separate packages, I'm quite certain that this needs further
> modifications at least to some of the files.  The current mode of
> operation is that they should be compiled together with the rest of Org
> and no checks are made if they work if installed sepaerately.  Some of
> them likely do, others probably not.

Yes, either choice would be an effort.

However, there is currently the problem that some packages depend on
org, and others on org-plus-contrib, which cause both to be installed
(without some controtionist gymnastics).  IMHO, the Org package at
Orgmode.org/elpa should either always include contrib, as the git
repository does, or split the contrib part into an org-contrib package
that depends on org.

All the best,
Terry
-- 
T.F. Torrey