Re: buildbot setup

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Stefan Monnier writes:

 > > Or are users going to track the tested branch but developers the
 > > trunk?
 > 
 > That'd be the idea, yes.

XEmacs tried this.  We abandoned it.  It was too much trouble for
maintainers for the amount of trouble it saved users.  It wasn't
anywhere near 100% effective, either, as the users who couldn't build
the trunk frequently had the same unusual trouble with the (allegedly)
tested branch.

We don't currently have any users with requirements like Alan
Mackenzie's, but if we did I'd simply keep track of potentially
destabilizing commits, and tag the last version before one of those.
That might not work so well with Emacs, though.  XEmacs has a very few
large committers whose stuff comes in batches, while others don't tend
to commit patches to areas that might break the build.  I gather Emacs
has several committers working in areas with some risk of breaking the
build, so it might not be so easy to choose an apparently stable
version.

If you could automatically tag based on green buildbots, that might be
a worthwhile alternative, though.