Re: proposal: require GnuTLS 3.1.x (previous stable)

[Peder O. Klingenberg]

On Tue, Nov 25 2014 at 18:55, Ivan Shmakov wrote:

>       Yes, although I’d rather question the necessity of building
>       Emacs ‘master’ on an LTS GNU/Linux system.  If the intent is to
>       use the last decade’s versions of Libc and Coreutils, – why
>       Emacs has to be newer than that?

Because features.  My desktop machine runs Kubuntu 10.04 still, because
it mostly does what I need without needing my attention all the time, it
is a stable platform I can use to get work done.

There is no conscious desire to run old software for nostalgias sake,
more a lack of desire to upgrade willy-nilly with the associated
breakage-fixing and retraining of muscle memory because some dimwits
decided to reinvent everything badly.

I do most of my work in Emacs.  That means I care about it more than I
care about this months desktop fad, the latest and greatest in init
systems, or whatever fancy gui+daemon should be used to dynamically
configure the network on my perfectly stationary, hardwired desktop
machine.

I started building emacs from trunk because the repository version had
features I wanted.  Mostly --daemon, which is a killer feature and a
real productivity boost for me, and which was not available in the
distro-packaged emacs.  I was willing to invest the time and effort
involved to get a better emacs, but I was, and am, reluctant to upgrade
the bits of the machine that work just fine.

>       Especially given that the older versions of the system, when
>       necessary to support legacy software, could be just as well be
>       run in chroot(2) environments.  (Or even be entirely “virtual.”)

It's not about legacy software.  It's about how I choose to spend my
limited time.  Playing sysadmin was really exciting back when I
installed slackware from a stack of floppies.  These days, time spent
maintaining the OS is time not spent doing what they pay me to do, and
what I enjoy doing - develop software.

...Peder...
-- 
I wish a new life awaited _me_ in some off-world colony.