Subject: bug#19296: [PATCH] Package archives now have priorities.

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 06:19:29 -0800 (PST)

Here we seem to have a bug report that "fixes" a problem that
is not even clearly described.  Instead of a proper problem
description, we get, directly, a "solution".

Please prove the problem first.  A one-liner stating that MELPA
assigns date version numbers and you need to "fix" that is not
a problem description.

> This solves the "MELPA problem", where MELPA assigns date-based
> version numbers to packages which override all other archives.
> Giving MELPA a lower priority means packages are installed from
> MELPA only when the package is not available from other archives.

Why is that good?  Why should MELPA be given a lower priority?

> This can be overridden manually by the user.

How?

Why make users jump through extra hoops to retrieve packages
from MELPA in priority?

This sounds like a bad hack.

MELPA is, so far, the most complete repository, with the most
packages, refreshed dynamically and presenting the most recent
versions of packages.

Many users put MELPA first in their list of repositories to
retrieve from.  It doesn't sound like their use case is being
considered seriously.

Caveat: I'm going only by your description above; I have not
looked into the code.  It just smells bad, from that description.