bug#63757: 29.0.91 order of package paths changed: random old versions of packages in load-path

[Philip Kaludercic]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> So what exactly was the change installed back in Aug 2022 supposed to
>> improve?
>
> I believe its intention was only to give preference to the VC packages
> (I still don't know why it moved the "prefer built-in packages" part
> (and then changed it to test `package-disabled-p`); I presume it was an
> accident).

This is true, it was my mistake made when refactoring package-vc.

> So my patch *may* be a regression for users of `package-vc`, but since
> it's a new feature in Emacs-29, I think it's perfectly acceptable.
> Especially because the sort it implemented is wrong (because the sort
> predicate fails to define a partial order, so the output will depend on
> arbitrary details of how `sort` happens to pass elements to the
> predicate), so it's not at all clear that it does what it intends to
> do anyway.
> Furthermore I believe that it is mostly redundant: VC packages should
> almost always already be sorted first by virtue of the version being
> almost always higher than non-VC packages.

I'll do some more testing to see if everything still works, but from
what I see it seems like it is doing the right thing.  The issue I was
trying to solve back then did not exist.

-- 
Philip Kaludercic