I've been driving elpaca for some weeks now and it is fairly usable. Very fast installs. Occasional jankiness (as is to be expected from alpha software)
I just started using Straight a few months ago, best improvement that I have experienced in 40 years of Emacs use. I will definitely try switching to built in support for package.el, as well as switch to eglot and other new built-in features. I prefer shorter Emacs config files.
I’ve been using Mitsuharu’s port for years, always compiling it myself from his bitbucket repo. I am no longer sure how different it is from the vanilla GNU distribution. When I first started using emacs, long before the Mac port, the current version was 18.57, I think. It was a long wait for version 19 to appear, being the first version with proper X11 support. It amazes me to think of how much has happened since, and that emacs is as useful and relevant now as then.
I have been compiling from git head since they added jit compilation, as it is much faster. (On Linux and Mac). Sometimes I run into weirdness and repull and recompile. My version says 30 now, but if homebrew packages 29 I might switch back.
Just as one data point, I have never used straight.el, package.el as it exists in even Emacs 26 is sufficient for me for all my packages. I think this is true for the majority of Emacs users that use packages.
> Install packages from source with package.el
Emacs users updating to 29: do you plan to use this instead of Straight now? If not, can you help me to understand what more Straight provides?
Emacs on macOS users: do you generally compile new versions of Emacs from source, or wait for ports like Mitsuharu Yamamoto's one[1] to update?
[1] https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/src/master/, used by https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport