Re: Bug Database?

[David Reitter]

On 17 Oct 2006, at 22:49, Nick Roberts wrote:

> I'm quite sure if they all had to be fixed first
> it would never get released.  I use Emacs every day and I must say  
> I've not
> encountered any of the bugs currently in FOR-RELEASE.

For about 18 months, I've been releasing a downstream project with  
binary builds of  patched and augmented GNU Emacs CVS checkouts  
(http://aquamacs.org). We have around 3,500 different users in any  
given week and more than 10,000 application starts a day. We're doing  
monthly or bi-monthly releases. The users have proven to be a useful  
test community. Over time, we have seen a lot of bug reports from  
users, some of which concerning bugs due to the use of functions in  
Emacs that wouldn't otherwise be used in a straight CVS build. I've  
generated or checked and passed on about 150 bug reports as a result,  
as my e-mail archive tells me. (Almost all of them were quickly fixed  
by maintainers!)

It appears that the bug reports I am receiving (which actually  
concern issues in the Emacs core) have been getting a lot more scarce  
over the past couple of months, even though our user base has been  
growing. That's a good sign.

That said, good quality is what people are expecting from a project  
that doesn't release very often...