Re: Contributing to Emacs Development

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:53:35 -0600
> From: address@hidden
> 
>       Umm, not quite. If I may reproduce my emacs info dir snippet:
>  * Emacs: (emacs).      The extensible self-documenting text editor.
> * Emacs-20: (emacs-20).      The extensible self-documenting text editor.
> * Emacs-21: (emacs-21).      The extensible self-documenting text editor.
> 
>       If you ask for the emacs info; info -f emacs, you shall, via
>  the magic symlinks, get either emacs-20 or emacs-21 file, as the case
>  may be.
> 
>       If you ask directly info -f emacs-21; you still get what you
>  asked for.

I think Kai explained why this will not necessarily work.  An xref
like (message)Foo will go to the file `message' in the default Emacs's
info directory, not in Emacs 21's info directory.  Imagine the case
where the node Foo doesn't even exist in the file `message' that came
with Emacs 20 (that's a real-life example, since message.texi got
reworked for Emacs 21).

>       You misunderstand. I can (and do) run emacs v20 and emacs v19 at
>  the same time; by invoking them as emacs20 and emacs19. I can. if I
>  wish. even run two different versions of emacs20 side by side, if I
>  so desired. We ahve put a great deal of thought into flexibility in
>  Debian's alternative methods

It's quite possible that I misunderstood; if so, I apologize for being
dense.  I still don't see how different versions running
simultaneously could cause an Info reader to go to the correct file in
each case, given a cross-reference, when the information about the
default `emacs' is recorded globally in the file system.