Re: address@hidden: Re: Possible help with stable Emacs releases.]

[Miles Bader]

Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden> writes:
> After grepping for `emacs-version', it appears that changing the
> current convention would require checking a surprisingly *huge* amount
> of code.  A non-trivial amount of code will probably have to be
> rewritten.

Huh?  Why?  Emacs already uses three-component version numbers, it's
just that nobody ever seems to use the last one except for setting it to
"50" in CVS.  Can you point out an example of code that would have to be
rewritten?  To my knowledge, about 99.9% of version-checking code does
simple string-compares to look at the first 2 digits.

An interesting idea might be to make `emacs-minor-version' a
floating-point number, e.g. for 21.4, emacs-minor-version is 4, but for
21.4.1, it would be 4.1.  I'll bet that would make a lot of code `just
work'.

-Miles
-- 
I'm beginning to think that life is just one long Yoko Ono album; no rhyme
or reason, just a lot of incoherent shrieks and then it's over.  --Ian Wolff