We all know and love the MELPA package repository. At least we all know it, but not everyone loves the idea of using package snapshots. Some people would rather use only stable package releases and that’s understandable. Unfortunately the major community repository for stable packages Marmalade is often plagued by technical issues (that should be fixed once its elnode -powered rewrite is ready) and stale packages (due to the fact the sometimes people upload packages they don’t own there and stop updating them after a while).

Now there’s an alternative to Marmalade, which offers a MELPA-like experience - MELPA stable. It offers stable packages built automatically from git tags, meaning the only thing you have to do to release a new version of a package (assuming there’s a MELPA recipe for it, of course) is to tag the release in git . No more stale packages! No more manual package uploads!

To use the new repo add this to your Emacs config:

( add-to-list 'package-archives ' ( "melpa-stable" . "http://melpa-stable.milkbox.net/packages/" ) t )

Currently more than 500 packages are available for installation there. That number is bound to grow (a lot).