GNU ELPA is one of the most well-known package repositories for Emacs (and the only one enabled by default).1 Recently I learned there’s also a GNU ELPA repository for pre-release versions of the ELPA packages called elpa-devel/gnu-devel. You can add it to your Emacs config like this if you want to install the development version of some package (e.g. for test purposes or to get a bug fix early):

(add-to-list 'package-archives '("gnu-devel" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/devel/"))

You can think of this repository as something similar to the popular MELPA repository, but limited only to the packages part of GNU ELPA. It seems that the repository is not mentioned anywhere in Emacs’s documentation, that’s why I decided to write this short article about it. I doubt that most of you will ever need it, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to know about its existence.

That’s all I have for you today. Keep hacking!

  1. In Emacs 28.1 another package repository is going to be available by default - NonGNU ELPA. ↩