[Nix-dev] Updating emacs-snapshot package

[Shea Levy]

On 1/17/12 7:22 PM, Phil Hagelberg wrote:
> Is it just discouraged to package prerelease versions of software in 
> general? If it's merely a question of stability then it shouldn't be a 
> problem; the Emacs 24 pretest is very stable.

I don't set the policies, but my thought would be: If there's a 
significant reason (new feature, important bug fixes, vastly improved 
performance, etc.) that all users of the package might benefit from a 
prerelease, then package it, otherwise wait for the official release. 
I'm not an emacs user, so I don't know what's different in the 
prerelease version, but if there's a good reason I or someone else can 
update the snapshot version in nixpkgs.

Unless there's a straightforward way to add "the latest successful build 
produced by this hydra server for that job within that jobset" to 
nixpkgs, then that would probably be preferable. But from my 
understanding of how nix and hydra work, that's not really feasible.

~Shea