Why are Emacs ELPA packages so out of date?

Question

And can I / how do I submit updates of packages that I use to the ELPA? Can someone provide an example of how to prepare paredit-22, for example, to put onto the ELPA?

Answer 1

The ELPA website explains exactly what to do:

http://tromey.com/elpa/upload.html

Answer 2

I think that one of the reasons that ELPA isn't getting many package submissions is that there is still little known about the official ELPA repository(http://elpa.gnu.org/) that will be setup for Emacs 24(which will have ELPA built-in). Without guidelines most people would probably rather wait than duplicate their efforts. There is also a lot of controversy surrounding ELPA - most about its inability to update packages automatically which makes a lot of users question its value at all. I, personally, favor distribution packages over something like ELPA, but not everyone is using GNU/Linux and even there not everyone would agree with me.