Emacs 31: Demonstration of pre-install package.el reviews

[pkal@spectra.video]

Call for review! Please find notes on how to to help below!

This is a video-demonstration of a small feature I have been working on for the Emacs package manager. It revolves around the package-review-policy user option that you can enable (or refine) to give you a chance to examine a package before installing it: This means browsing the source code before any code is evaluated (or macros are expanded, autoloads are scraped, bytecode is generated, etc.), reviewing diffs between the new and old versions of installation or reading archive-provided changelogs.

As of publishing you can find the source code here on the feature/package-revamp branch in emacs.git: https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?h=feature/package-revamp. Note that the actual branch we develop this change on might change in the future, so please track the thread below for further news.

For further background on the feature and if you want to join in on discussing it, see: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=74604#92. Please try the feature out, stress-test it and report issues back!

[pkal@social.sdfeu.org]

Package-suggestions for #emacs has been merged into the master branch (to be Emacs 31): https://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-02/msg00328.html. If you have any feedback please send it to this thread or write me an email directly!

Note that for now the minor mode `package-autosuggest-mode`, that would indicate that Emacs knows of a related package to install for a file type, is disabled by default. You can still use the `package-autosuggest` command.

[alison@burningboard.net]

@pkal@social.sdfeu.org @pkal@spectra.video Cool. I look forward to trying it out.