Emacs updating with the same package

Question

I am using Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS. I had installed GNU Emacs 26.0.50.2 Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. from the repository ubuntu-elisp/ppa. Now everytime I boot up I get the same update of about 36.7MB for emacs-snapshot emacs-snapshot-common emacs-snapshot-el. I am not sure if they are ignoring the updates earlier installed or whether they were not installed. But the upgrade does not give any errors.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  emacs-snapshot emacs-snapshot-common emacs-snapshot-el
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 36.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 85.0 kB disk space will be freed.
Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-elisp/ppa/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 emacs-snapshot-el all 20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1 [15.6 MB]
Get:2 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-elisp/ppa/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 emacs-snapshot amd64 20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1 [3,878 kB]
Get:3 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-elisp/ppa/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 emacs-snapshot-common all 20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1 [17.2 MB]
Fetched 36.7 MB in 27s (1,351 kB/s)                                                                                                           
(Reading database ... 367153 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../emacs-snapshot-el_20170210%3a93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1_all.deb ...
Unpacking emacs-snapshot-el (20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) over (20170209:93097-d825d1f-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../emacs-snapshot_20170210%3a93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking emacs-snapshot (20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) over (20170209:93097-d825d1f-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../emacs-snapshot-common_20170210%3a93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1_all.deb ...
Unpacking emacs-snapshot-common (20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) over (20170209:93097-d825d1f-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for install-info (6.1.0.dfsg.1-5) ...
install-info: warning: no info dir entry in `/usr/share/info/gnash_ref.info.gz'
install-info: warning: no info dir entry in `/usr/share/info/gnash_user.info.gz'
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.3~bzr0+16.04.20160824-0ubuntu1) ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6ubuntu3.1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu5) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.59ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-0ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Setting up emacs-snapshot-common (20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) ...
Setting up emacs-snapshot-el (20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) ...
Setting up emacs-snapshot (20170210:93105-26187a3-emacs-25.1~ubuntu16.04.1) ...

Edit:(missed out the question. thank you @Drew for pointing it out Why does this happen and what can I do to avoid this?

Thanks in advance for the support

Answer 1

It is likely you are not getting the same package update.

You have installed a snapshot package. This is a package which is linked to the head of the current Emacs development repository. It is common for snapshot packages to be automatically setup to do a fresh build on a nightly basis to pick up the most recent changes. So, what you are likely seeing is actual updates. This will likely continue until the next version of Emacs is released.

If what you really wanted was to update to emacs 25.1, which is the most recent emacs release, then you can follow the instructions at this link

Answer 2

The error that occurs after downloading at snapshot version of a package is similar to the following:

$ sudo update-info-dir

install-info: warning: no info dir entry in `/usr/share/info/gnash_user.info.gz'

install-info: warning: no info dir entry in `/usr/share/info/gnash_ref.info.gz'

That is because both info pages are lacking a description.

This is the job of the person managing the info for, in this case, the gnash package. Often the coder also writes the info page for the package.

It is not possible to ask for an adept info hacker to write the description because not all hackers in IT understand what that package actually does.