development practices for ELPA packages

[Yoni Rabkin]

Hello,

I currently have Emms and rt-liberation in ELPA. Users of those packages
are happy with this. However, as a developer I'm less happy. I would
like to ask for help in learning how people with packages in ELPA
develop them.

Right now I'm working on the next release of rt-liberation. I would like
to tell Emacs: "load all of the ELPA packages normally, but when you get
to rt-liberation please load my local, non-packaged, version from
/devel/rt-liberation"

I know I can give the package manager a list of packages to load, but
that doesn't help me. I want to tell the package manage which package
_not_ to load, and what to load instead.

How do people who work on ELPA packages manage this?

Thank you in advance.

-- 
   "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"