Selon David Kastrup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > J�r�me Marant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > While contributing to maintainership of the emacs21 package, it > > became more and more obvious to me that maintaining lisp modes > > within Emacs is not an easy task: upstream fixes bugs in the CVS > > trunk and since years separate stable Emacs releases, modes are > > diverting which makes this task difficult. > > Well, the solution, of course, is to release more often. It is not > like the problem of stable releases and backports and so on is exactly > unknown to Debian.
Releasing more often is the ideal solution. Providing more bugfix releases would fullfil my/users needs as well. See further. > > Yesterday, I took the opportunity to participate to a thread in > > which I expressed the idea of releasing the core Emacs and others > > lisp modes separately in order to provide users with bugfixes more > > often. Hence, waiting for the next stable release would be painless > > for both users, and us, maintainers. > > > > Unfortunately, it quickly ended with this message from RMS: > > > > http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/[email protected]/1445574.html > > You have to be aware that there are rather few Emacs developers, and > an inordinate time is spent getting Emacs into releasable state. You > are proposing to distract developers by having to cater for code (and > we are talking hundreds of packages here), cater for backports, not > make use of Emacs features _for_ _years_ that are introduced for the > sake of making code easier to write, and so on. ... > If that would have seemed feasible, then Emacs-22 development would > not happen on the CVS trunk, but rather in a separate branch. We are > going forward and don't have the resources to maintain an outpost in > the past. Thank you very much for clarifying. I more awae of the situation than I used to be. RMS's reaction was not cristal clear and it is understandable. > > Some will say I deserved it. Maybe. > > I think that RMS' reaction was somewhat overblown. However, this sort > of detraction and bickering and demands to keep Emacs development > nailed to Emacs-21 have long been discussed and choices have been > made. Questioning them every month anew as if nothing was already > said about them, is not productive. Also keep in mind that RMS has a > busy schedule with partly patchy Email access. And that means > sometimes discussions and proposals which he'd otherwise shoot down in > a minute develop a life of their own, waste a lot of time and effort > over days, only to be closed down afterwards. And if he is of the > opinion that he already shot down an unfruitful discussion, and still > people waste more days about it, it does not help his mood. Even after what he said, I'm not even angry at him. > > I'm just surprised about such a reaction from someone who mentions > > Free Speech as an analogy to Free Software. I would never have > > imagined that expressing ones opinion would lead to being considered > > as a threat to the development of Emacs. > > All the backport and back compatibility worries of a separate package > management have not had the most convincing results with XEmacs, which > often features barely working, decrepit packages. And not being able > to use new XEmacs core features in those packages without risking > breaking earlier XEmacs installations is not good, either. It means > that bug workarounds need to stay (and be maintained) for longer than > desirable. I knew that RMS hates package systems such as the one from XEmacs so I certainly did not want to propose this. What I thought was a good idea was to have non-core packages in a separate CVS module, shipped altogether in a single tarball, updated more frequently and to be unpacked at regular locations. No package system involved. But I since your clarified that backward compatibility is a least priority, there is no point mentioning this again. > > After all, I already managed to send modest patches to improve the > > build process. Would an Agent of Destruction even do that? > > He did not claim you were acting out of malice. Most projects die > from the inside. I understand. > > Now, the question is how I should interprete "Please stop > > interfering with Emacs development"? Are my (even modest) > > contributions nor interventions not wanted any more? In that case, > > there is no point for me to keep on working on emacs-snapshot. I > > don't know him very well, so I'm just wondering. > > Actually, RMS is rather discouraging investing too much work into > emacs-regular, like backporting, trying to get changes into Emacs CVS > for the sake of Emacs-21.4 and so on. So if you want to take his > advice personally, it would more likely cause you to quit work on the > "regular" emacs package rather than emacs-snapshot. I have one additional requirement which is satisfying Debian users as much as possible. I can't tell them that they have to wait more years before seeing their bugs fixed (I don't blame emacs-devel). So, I have to do a backport work when possible. > The basic message is: upstream Emacs development does not have the > resources to support backports to Emacs-21 in any manner, and should > not be bothered about it if possible. Questions are ok, I guess, but > expensive discussions about going backwards are not really > appreciated, and you must not expect backport considerations to make > it into the CVS code: we have enough problems going forward, and that > is where the priority lies. Do you remember I proposed to take care of bugfix releases with interested people? Many patches against 21.3 are sent to bug-gnu-emacs and are ready to be applied as is. I think we can add more resources for this. RMS was no against even, IIRC. Regards, -- J�r�me Marant -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
