[ESS-bugs] ESS 13.09-1 with old R versions fails pretty badly

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Vitalie Spinu <spinuvit at gmail.com>
>>>>>     on Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:02:45 -0700 writes:

    >>>> "Sparapani, Rodney" on Fri, 1 Nov 2013 00:42:04 +0000
    >>>> wrote:
    >> But, how is MELPA being updated every hour?  What if I
    >> break SVN (as I have on occasion)?  Is MELPA broken?

    >> I don't like automatic updates.  I was hoping Emacs would
    >> adopt an XEmacs-like package system which had developer
    >> initiated releases, but apparently it is not going to
    >> happen.  Progress?

    > Yes, MELPA just fetches the latest stuff if you instruct
    > it to do. This is how it is setup now. We can change that
    > to fetch from the previous most stable release. That is a
    > technicality.

But an important one, to me.
I think (without knowing) MELPA will have to change quite a bit,
before we can easily work with it, particularly if its
designers/maintainers think that an Emacs package has to contain
emacs lisp source only.

99.99% of computer users out there still think of software as
something you install, maybe update, but you always have
releases (maybe patch releases etc) initiated by the maintainers
of the software.

I want to continue working on that basis, for the time being,
notably when considering the  ESS <-> R  interfaces and also
when e.g., maintenance, dealing with bugs, etc.


>From a much wider point of view, I wonder if the emacs community
steers in a good direction, if they think that many professional
groups would accept automatic on-the-fly updates on their computers.
I fear that such decissions will rather even further marginalize
the emacs user community..

Martin