Re: More metaproblem

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stephen Leake <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 02:38:52 -0600

Thanks for the feedback.  A few comments below.

> >> Sometimes trunk is locked down and most commits are supposed to go to
> >> the current emacs-NN branch.
> >
> > Thats a thing of a distant past.  Trunk (a.k.a. "master") is nowadays
> > never locked, but there are (usually short) periods before a new
> > release branch is cut, when there's a "feature freeze", i.e. commits
> > that introduce new features should not be pushed to master.
> 
> That's not what admin/notes/repo says:
> 
>     Sometime before the release of a new major version of Emacs
>     a "feature freeze" is imposed on the trunk.  No new features may be
>     added after this point.  This is usually some months before the release.
> 
> "some months" is not "short".

The text doesn't say anything about the duration of the freeze, only
about the timing of its beginning.

The tendency lately is to make the freeze "as short as possible".  But
making a decision that master is stable enough to cut a release branch
requires human judgment, and cannot be too fast with Emacs.  E.g.,
blatant bugs sometimes take more than a week to be reported after they
are committed.

> (see below for suggested patch)

I don't think it's accurate, but I'll let Stefan and Glenn comment.

> >> Emacs is not an easy project for newcomers or drive-by contributors.
> >
> > Which large and complex project _is_ easy for newcomers?
> 
> Good point. But there are still those (like me) with some experience who
> are considering contributing; the issues raised here are barriers to
> them.

I think we are all for that; the problem, as always, is how to do
that, not if we want doing it.