Re: Post-22.1 development?

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     In a recent email, Stefan suggested that we should not restrict 22.x
>     development to bugfixes, but also include new features if the new
>     features are not too invasive.  Do people agree with this approach?
>
> We can put in a limited set of new features, but only if they
> are really important as well as safe.
>
>     As for the trunk, should we begin merging the unicode branch in?
>
> Let's wait a couple of months.  I think it will be easier to move
> some changes selectively to the Emacs 22 branch if we have not
> included unicode-2 in the trunk.  As of now, any change in the trunk
> would work in the branch.  After unicode-2 is installed, many
> changes will be done differently, and they won't work unchanged in
> the Emacs 22 branch.

I don't think this is a good plan, and here is why:

EMACS_22_BASE is for work on Emacs 22.2
trunk is for work on Emacs 22.2
unicode-2 is for work on Emacs 23.1

This is clearly one branch too many (and I am not counting multi-tty
yet).  Since you yourself say that only important and safe changes
should get into 22.2, I don't see the point in maintaining three
branches.

In particular, I don't see the point in keeping trunk stalled to
mechanisms that won't work with Emacs 23.1.  There have been a number
of band-aid fixes to functions that were supposed to be replaced by
proper code once the unicode-2 mechanisms are in use.  There is no
point in spending energy on stuff that is neither going to end up in
Emacs 22.2 (since it is not important and safe enough), nor in Emacs
23.1 (since it fails to use the unicode-2 mechanisms).

Please let us not waste time and energy on code that has no proper
place in any future release.

As long as no Emacs 23.1 mechanisms are involved, synching a
unicode-2-empowered trunk's changes (if we want to) to EMACS_22_BASE
will be easy.  And where Emacs 23.1 mechanisms are involved, we don't
actually want to figure out a parallel Emacs 22 mechanism, anyway.
Not if it is not absolutely necessary.

Merging unicode-2 to the trunk now rather than in a few months will
help to keep the focus on the ongoing work for Emacs 23.1.

We have stalled development for years in order to get a stable release
out.  We have put out a release, and created a branch for safe and
important fixes to it.  This is the time for the trunk to move on to
Emacs 23.1.  For Emacs 22.2, we have EMACS_22_BASE.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum