Re: Next release from master

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2016 06:23:03 +0200
> Cc: Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden>, address@hidden,
>       address@hidden
> 
> I would be happy to have to write my own documentation, provided nobody is 
> expecting to see the next Emacs release anytime soon.

We need to have both code and documentation for a release, so these
two tasks are not mutually exclusive conditions of releasing a new
Emacs version, they both need to be done.

> Unfortunately, since there are so few core developers, or people who take 
> responsibility for various core packages, some of the time I could have used 
> to work on the said documentation, I had to spend on e.g. fixing stuff in 
> etags.el, or pieces of VC left broken by ESR's latest changes.

Sadly, this is true.  However, we are all in the same boat, since we
don't have on board people who work only on documentation.  Each one
of us, when working on documentation, uses time that could have been
invested in development of code and fixing bugs.  When someone submits
code without proper documentation, eventually Someone Else™ will have
to do that part in their stead.  TANSTAAFL.

>     If you think that it's not important to
>     provide documentation for the code you write, then okay, but that's not
>     a position i share.
> 
> Not as important as working code, or fewer bugs in Emacs in general.

I think both are equally important.  A complex system such as Emacs
without proper documentation will be harder to develop and harder to
attract new contributors.  And if some domain expert steps down,
his/her replacement will have hard time getting up to speed.

I also think that if each one of us invests small efforts on
individual changes to the documentation here and there, it will not
steal any significant amounts of time from our development resources,
because writing documentation, with only very rare exceptions, takes a
small fraction of time needed for design, development, testing, and
debugging.  By contrast, having to wait for weeks for documentation
update, like what happened just now, is bad for frequent releases.