Re: Sync up the org in emacs master to org maint branch?

["Phillip Lord" <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>]

On Wed, February 1, 2017 6:51 pm, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Aaron Ecay <aaronecay@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>> If ELPA made available (on the server for downloading, and in the
>> client for installing) old versions of packages, then users could always
>> be offered the latest compatible version, but not later incompatible
>> ones.
>
> I don't think having Emacs developers fixing bugs in a number of
> different versions of a package sounds like a good way to spend time,
> either.

Well, they do that anyway. Org-mode, in Emacs core is quite a way behind
org-mode latest. That's the start point of this discussion. And, for
packages which are maintained only in core (not synced to an external repo
like org), well, we currently have Emacs-25 and Emacs-26 in active
development.

Currently development of Emacs core with slow releases contributes to
this, because the old versions of org remain around and in active use for
a long period of time. In the case of org, this was exacerbated when it
changed the features it provides, meaning that upgrading to ELPA worked
imperfectly.

There is even a reasonable possibility that with a smaller core, and
faster releases, fewer changes would happen in core, so supporting
multiple versions might well become easier because the differences would
be smaller.

These are complex questions, and it's hard to get evidence one way or
another. But many other systems do support numerous small packages,
building up into a greater whole: consider npm, CPAN, CRAN, CTAN or,
indeed, debian. And, yes, sometimes we do end up in version hell, but
mostly we don't.

Phil