Re: [MAINTENANCE] Do we have any backwards-compatibility policy for third-party packages?

[Ihor Radchenko]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> I guess we are limited by what the packages we rely on support. For
> example, if geiser doesn't support Emacs 26 but org is supposed to,
> there isn't much we can do. We cannot afford to fork geiser and modify
> it to add the support and even if we provided a patch to add the support
> to the geiser project, they may not merge it.
>
> Best we can do is best effort and reflect this limitation in the manual
> where we stipulate what our backwards compatibility policy is. 

Ok. Here are the tentative patches for Org manual and WORG maintenance
page.

>From 15a929176e9c03be6ef3bdb5b6401a8732c188a7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
Message-Id: 
<15a929176e9c03be6ef3bdb5b6401a8732c188a7.1670680001.git.yantar92@posteo.net>
From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2022 16:46:10 +0300
Subject: [PATCH] org-maintenance.org: Document third-party package
 compatibility

* org-maintenance.org (Org releases are compatible with the latest
three major Emacs releases): Document that we only guarantee
compatibility with the latest stable versions of third-party packages.

Link: https://orgmode.org/list/86iljd3x90.fsf@gmail.com
---
 org-maintenance.org | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/org-maintenance.org b/org-maintenance.org
index 8c7d9492..13f0b30c 100644
--- a/org-maintenance.org
+++ b/org-maintenance.org
@@ -172,6 +172,10 @@ ** Org releases are compatible with the latest three major 
Emacs releases
 older Emacsen: but maintainers are not bound to fix bugs reported on
 them.
 
+Some Org components also depend on third-party packages available
+through package archives.  Org is only guaranteed to be compatible
+with the last stable versions of these third-party packages.
+
 Org versions that are not yet released (from the main or bugfix
 branch) don't come with any promise regarding compatibility.
 
-- 
2.38.1

>From de2a6b9a924d2c5b135104dc2a383bafdb1995bb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
Message-Id: 
<de2a6b9a924d2c5b135104dc2a383bafdb1995bb.1670680060.git.yantar92@posteo.net>
From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2022 16:45:03 +0300
Subject: [PATCH] org-manual: Document third-party package compatibility

* doc/org-manual.org (Installation): Document that we only guarantee
compatibility with the latest stable versions of third-party packages.

Link: https://orgmode.org/list/86iljd3x90.fsf@gmail.com
---
 doc/org-manual.org | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/org-manual.org b/doc/org-manual.org
index 63e9d4139..8f4da3149 100644
--- a/doc/org-manual.org
+++ b/doc/org-manual.org
@@ -96,6 +96,10 @@ ** Installation
 that Org stable versions are meant to be fully compatible with the
 last three stable versions of Emacs but not with older Emacsen.
 
+Some Org components also depend on third-party packages available
+through package archives.  Org is only guaranteed to be compatible
+with the last stable versions of these third-party packages.
+
 *** Using Emacs packaging system
 :PROPERTIES:
 :UNNUMBERED: notoc
-- 
2.38.1

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>