OK. Another approach I had thought about was a list of packages which should not be fetched by the automatic package updating. User B could use this to avoid particular dependent packages, and it could be used by someone who is tracking the bleeding edge version of a package. Who knows what package version will be picked up for a package which is not officially released yet. It seems possible that the current package-get-base the current package updating system might overwrite a developmental version of a package with whatever it thinks is the latest version. Of course the list package-dont-update would default to nil so that it does not affect normal users. John Jones jj(a)asu.edu