Re: Request: new emacs release

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 30 Mar 2004 18:52:49 -0500
Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> wrote:

> I'll just say that in case someone still wonders, I'm 100% in agreement
> with Adrian that we should get a new releaqse from the CVS trunk ASAP.
> This means code freeze Real-Soon-Now.

The issue has been brought up a few times in past years, and (almost?)
everyone seems to agree that we should do something. Still, no decision
has been ever reached on the account of when/what to release, and whether
a new numbering scheme should be used.

So perhaps we should try to be positive:

 1) Is a "features" (i.e., from trunk) release necessary?

 2) Would it be useful?

 3) Is there any impeding reason?

 4) What would be the inconveniences?

 5) Should we change the numbering scheme?

In my (narrow) view, the answers are:

 1) Not "necessary", because 21.3 is pretty much rock-solid and there
    are (to my knowledge) no showstopper bugs waiting for an urgent
    patch.

 2) Would be useful, in two accounts: on one hand, the 3+ years of new
    developments would be exposed to the public (yeah, I know a few
    download from CVS, but that's not the same as a General Availability
    release) and so more used and more heavily tested; on the other hand,
    because it would help to dispell a certain perceived "staleness" of
    the Emacs project. To some, that seems like not a good reason to act,
    but, as recently witnessed with the Subversion 1.0.0 release,
    "getting out" a new version stirs interest and brings up new users
    and new developers.

 3) Not sure. I know there are a few branches heavily developed, most
    notably the Unicode one, but I'm not sure whether it was ever
    decided that the next features release would (or wouldn't) include
    the Unicode work. In other words, I don't know if there are plans to
    do a 21.4 "new features" from trunk and a 22.1 "full Unicode", or
    just one of them. Personally, I'd branch for 21.4 Real Soon Now and
    bring Unicode to the trunk so it could be on track for a release Not
    That Soon, But Soon Enough.

 4) The main inconvenience, IMO, is diverted resources. Still, I
    (perhaps naïvely) don't see it as a great problem. Measures can be
    taken, as semi-freezing the trunk while 21.4 is in pretest so we can
    focus on the release. I'd even bet the idea of getting ready to
    release so much improvements would have a positive impact on us... :)

 5) I think most developers agree that a new numbering scheme would be
    useful, though there's less agreement on exactly *which* one. I'm
    not going to repeat here the long threads, available in the mailing
    list archives :)

                                                                Juanma