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

[Robert J. Chassell]

Jérôme Marant wrote,

   Please re-read the whole thread and come back when you have done so.
   You misunderstood everything, no offence meant.

I just re-read the whole thread and as far as I can see, I described
the situation correctly.

What is not clear to me is whether Marant considers releases such as
21.2 and 21.3 as `stable'.  If not, then I did not describe his
proposal correctly.

My understanding is that currently, *every* release by the Emacs
developers is intended to be `stable'.  Every release is one that
should be able to fit into the Debian stable distribution without
first going through unstable and testing.  21.2 was supposed to have
been a tested and stable release.

This is a totally different release model than that used in Debian.
As Rob Browning said

    Debian's model is different, handling the testing *after* the
    intial release via the progression from unstable -> testing ->
    stable.

Rob also introduced the term `micro release'.

In this language, Emacs major and minor releases are intended to go
into Debian stable immediately; `micro releases' are intended to go
into Debian unstable.

With Rob's term, then Marant's original proposal makes sense as one
favoring `micro releases':

    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-09/msg00935.html

    What we propose is to maintain bugfix releases from stable
    releases. This is exactly the kind of job we are doing with
    the Debian Emacs package: collecting bugfixes, backporting
    fixes from the trunk.

in which the proposal is to make releases that fix bugs in Emacs
releases such as 21.2 and 21.3.

However, if you do not think of 21.2 and 21.3 as stable, it also makes
sense as a proposal to stop Emacs developers from making releases like
21.2 and 21.3.

Put another way, two courses are possible:

  * to make `micro' releases from stable and pretested releases such
    as 21.2 and 21.3;

  * to abolish `major bug fix' releases such as 21.2 and 21.3 and make
    all bug fix releases off of a release such as 21.1.

I realize I have been presuming that Emacs developers would continue
to make bug fix releases as well as new feature releases and that they
would also stick to their model of pretesting all releases so they are
as good and as stable as they can make them.

Jérôme's proposal made sense with this presumption.  

But it also made sense if he proposed abolishing pretested bug fix
releases by the Emacs developers and replacing them with unstable and
less tested releases that then go through post-release testing.

--
    Robert J. Chassell
    address@hidden                         GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc