Subject: bug#34390: package.el says "Obsolete" when it means "No Longer Used"

From: [email-masked] (Phillip Lord)
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 16:49:05 +0000

Currently package.el reports packages as "Obsolete" when this is
probably not a good choice of word, as it is being interpreted as "no
longer in active development".

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-02/msg00070.html

It happens when several versions of a package are installed. Consider
this report from M-x package-list-packages

  dash               2.12.0        obsolete              A modern list library for Emacs
  eglot              1.4           incompat   gnu        Client for Language Server Protocol (LSP) servers
  kiwix              0.4.0         incompat   melpa-s... Kiwix interface and support.

Dash is showing here are obsolete because in my installation 2.15.0 is installed.

  company            0.9.9         dependency            Modular text completion framework
  dash               2.15.0        dependency            A modern list library for Emacs
  dash-functional    2.15.0        dependency            Collection of useful combinators for Emacs Lisp
  direnv             1.4.0         dependency            direnv support for emacs

The problem is "obsolete" line appears quite some distance away from
other line which shows dash is installed.

I would suggested "installed but outdated" perhaps. Or "More Recent
Version Installed". Both a bit long.