Package: emacs;
Reported by: Corwin Brust <corwin <at> bru.st>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2020 21:57:02 UTC
Severity: wishlist
Found in version 27.1
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From: Corwin Brust <corwin <at> bru.st> To: 44085 <at> debbugs.gnu.org Subject: bug#44085: 27.1; enhance package meta-data for ELPA/package.el Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2020 16:56:12 -0500
It is not currently possible out-of-the-box to make `package-list-packages', for example, sort available packages based on which have been updated most recently. Other Emacs Lisp Package Archives (e.g. MELPA) solve this problem by prefixing release versions with a strictly formatted date-string, thus if one removes ELPA from `package-archives' one is able to sort by version to see those packages updated most/least recently. If one does not first remove ELPA all ELPA listing are pushed to the top and no indication of how empericaly recently (e.g. date or elapased time) ELPA hosted packages have been updated. While it could be easy for ELPA to follow the convention adopted elsewhere and provide the desired behavior consistantly that way, this feels like a hack. This request is to add additional meta-data, especially package-last-updated-datetime, or similar, to package.el and provide guidance to package authors to support this/these new data. (Hopefully this can be approached so that package authors would not explicitly set release date/time values often or at all as that seems error prone.) To reproduce (under Emacs -Q): 1. start Emacs 2. M-x package-list-packages 3. click the Version header 4. Note lack of indication when any given packags was last udpated Compare with: 1. start Emacs 2. M-: (setq package-archives (("MELPA" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))) RETURN 3. click the version header 4. Note packages are sorted with the most recently updated listed first. In GNU Emacs 27.1 (build 1, x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2020-08-21 built on CIRROCUMULUS Repository revision: 86d8d76aa36037184db0b2897c434cdaab1a9ae8 Repository branch: HEAD Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 10.0.18363 System Description: Microsoft Windows 10 Home (v10.0.1909.18363.1139) Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Debug on Error enabled globally Configured using: 'configure --without-dbus --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --without-compress-install 'CFLAGS=-O2 -static'' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND NOTIFY W32NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 HARFBUZZ ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS MODULES THREADS JSON PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP Important settings: value of $LANG: ENU locale-coding-system: cp1252 Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs text-property-search seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils time-date subr-x cl-loaddefs cl-lib cus-start cus-load tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp disp-table term/w32-win w32-win w32-vars term/common-win tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads w32notify w32 lcms2 multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 53994 9940) (symbols 48 6967 1) (strings 32 18567 1707) (string-bytes 1 542031) (vectors 16 9270) (vector-slots 8 123454 7690) (floats 8 22 250) (intervals 56 222 0) (buffers 1000 11)) -- Corwin 612-217-1742 612-298-0615 (fax) 612-695-4276 (mobile) corwin.brust (skype) corwin <at> bru.st
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