On the "next" packages, and packaging confusion.

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello,

As someone who’s been recently involved in packaging some software for GNU Guix 
I’m confused with certain choices, mostly with the [package]-next category. 
What should these next packages be? "More recent" than the non-next package? If 
so, how much more recent? One release ahead? Or is it supposed to follow the 
latest master release from the source repository of the package, and the 
non-next package would be the stable one?

None of the above options seem to satisfy, emacs-next does not follow the 
latest master, but it further away than one release from the stable. So what 
exactly does emacs-next follow for being updated? This is not only confusing, 
but I believe creating issues in packaging as well, someone has even consdiered 
packaging a "emacs-nextnext" [0].

A better solution is necessary, at least if not that we should decide what and 
how should the "next" packages be provided and packaged, emacs-next doesn’t 
even have a description. The next packages should have a _distinct_ description 
from the non-next ones, so that when the user is installing it they know that 
they’re installing not a stable, or more recent or whatever we decide as the 
distinguishing element between the two categories.

I’ve seen similar issues in trying to upgrade the ghc package as well, the 
ghc-next isn’t clear as to what its following [1].

A clearance of these confusions would be better for both package maintainers 
and end-users who don’t see much beyond the description, version and do `guix 
install'.

[1]: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/47335
[0]: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/73281

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.