Re: Updating the "ELPA Protocol"

[Philip Kaludercic]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>>> One issue I have been told is the issue of renaming a package, so that
>>>> package.el can transparently handle the rename.  That appears to not be
>>>> supported.
>
> I think we'd need more details and concrete examples to judge how best
> handle such renamings.  The problem I see is that in Emacs, names are
> very visible: the package name almost inevitably affect the ELisp
> files's names, which themselves affect the functions and vars defined
> therein.
>
> For that reason handling the renaming only in ELPA is rarely sufficient.
> And also for that reason, renamings are rare.

>From what I know this happens from time to time on MELPA.  The changes
usually have to be backwards-compatible or the renames must be trivial
(a change like "foo" -> "foo-mode" or vice versa).

>>> How about using something like Debian's transitional packages, where you
>>> replace the old package with an empty package that just depends on the
>>> new package?  Would that work?
>> It might, but then the user is required to remove the old package and
>> select the new one, right?
>
> Compared to all the adjustments they may need to do do their config,
> I suspect this is rather minor (and as the other Stefan mentions, it's
> not indispensable).

True, but I can imagine it causing confusion, when you find the actually
selected package being empty and the real package listed as a "mere"
dependency.