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Re: Do pretests reach end users?


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: Do pretests reach end users?
Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2020 09:32:52 +0300

> From: Dmitry Alexandrov <dag@gnui.org>
> Cc: liwei.ma@gmail.com,  kevin.legouguec@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2020 04:31:50 +0300
> 
> https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.0.91-x86_64-installer.exe

Wrong URL.  The important one is this:

  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/emacs-27.0.91.tar.xz

> > meant to be tested by people who track the Emacs development.
> 
> I believe, people who track Emacs development rather build from master.

Mostly, yes.  Which is why, when the release branch is cut, we ask
them to switch to the release branch instead.

> > Its difference from the corresponding Git branch is that it is a tarball 
> > that builds like a release would, and thus one of its main purposes is to 
> > see that the tarball itself doesn't miss anything (which would mean we need 
> > to fix our procedure for producing the tarball).
> 
> Aha.  Thanks for explanation.
> 
> Yet, I suppose, only a neglectable minority of bugs can be introduced by 
> release procedure itself.

Perhaps; but there's no way of finding them except by producing a
tarball.

> > And the other important purpose is to catch the attention of people here 
> > and encourage them to switch to the pretest version instead of the Git 
> > version
> 
> That is, it exists to encourage those who track the master branch to 
> downgrade?  o_O

Yes.

> > We cannot control the policies of the various distros
> 
> Of course, you can!
> 
> Just declare the next pretest version 27.1 instead

Why not declare the Git version 27.1 (or, rather, 28.1 instead; 27.1
is passé), then?

There are many absurd suggestions that could be made, but only a small
number of useful ones.  For some strange reason, I tend not to pay
attention to the former kind.

> > Sometimes they are, nonetheless, presumably because the people who are 
> > responsible for the distros read the announcements about the pretests
> 
> Any example?

I sometimes see versions like XX.YY.90 with telltale signs that they
were not the pretest.  Search the bug list if you are interested.

> That is, the _only_ known to me system left, where Emacs pretests are 
> available for installation, is Microsoft Windows.

I believe you drew this conclusion because someone pointed you to the
wrong URL of the pretest; see above.

> Well...  Windows is the most popular desktop system after all, but I would 
> really like to see GNU Emacs better tested on secondary platforms, such as 
> GNU/Linux, too.

Actually, my hidden agenda is to deprecate the support for GNU/Linux
and other Posix platforms, and leave MS-Windows as the only system
Emacs supports.  To wit: my main development machine runs MS-Windows,
as the first step in that direction.  And, of course, the pretest
installer that you just told about, is only for Windows, for the same
reason.  But please don't tell anyone about this plan, not yet: they
won't understand.

> And I see two ways to achieve it.
> 
> The first one is to contact all distributors one by one, explaining them that 
> they better be reading announcements for Emacs pretests in order to package 
> them in their unstable branches, as Emacs pretest is actually pretty stable 
> for todayʼs standards of development.

Doing that is obviously fine with me.  It can only benefit Emacs
development if the pretests are used and tested by more users.



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