Re: Reordering etc/NEWS

[David Kastrup]

Karl Fogel <address@hidden> writes:

> Why are we blocking new changes?  Why not (say) have an open trunk,
> and use a release branch to isolate the release from churn, like
> other projects do?

The one posting you have missed of importance is the one where Richard
asked for volunteers that would consider taking over maintenance of
Emacs once the release is out of the door.  I have no idea what list
of candidates, if any, has resulted from that.  I also have no idea
what candidates might have been struck from the list as the result of
their way of voicing their concerns about the current process.  I
certainly hope the list is not empty.

Richard has just announced that he plans on releasing Emacs 22.1 from
the EMACS_BASE_22 branch.  It is not clear to me what should right now
happen on the trunk, though: should the branch merges of multitty and
emacs-unicode-2 commence now, or later?

Maybe Richard wants to leave the decision to whoever is going to end
up as the maintainer of Emacs 23.  And leave that decision until after
22.1 is released.

I have seen that he is quite busy with travel and talk in Europe in
the next few weeks.  When I have a schedule like that, I know that I
don't get pretty much any of the work done I plan to do alongside.  In
the light of that, I would consider it beneficial if Richard took a
path before departure where we are not stalled waiting for him.  This
could either mean deciding what kind of merges may happen to what
branch, or appointing someone to make these kind of decisions at least
for some time.  Whether or not he wants to let the release of 22.1
rest with somebody else is a different question.  There is probably
not much sense in that, since most candidates would probably just take
EMACS_BASE_22 and just release it as-is.  So he could, instead of
passing the buck, equally well do this himself.

I certainly hope that we can soon get to a state where work on Emacs
23 can commence, and also that we get to see a release soon.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum