From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jon Cast Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: No calc in pretest? Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 16:03:02 -0500 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <200207022103.g62L32719402@d-ip-129-15-78-125.cs.ou.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1025643944 23095 127.0.0.1 (2 Jul 2002 21:05:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 21:05:44 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Eli Zaretskii , storm@cua.dk, Emacs Devel Mailing List Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17PUqG-00060H-00 for ; Tue, 02 Jul 2002 23:05:44 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17PUvS-0004uz-00 for ; Tue, 02 Jul 2002 23:11:06 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17PUqd-0006wq-00; Tue, 02 Jul 2002 17:06:07 -0400 Original-Received: from d-ip-129-15-78-125.cs.ou.edu ([129.15.78.125]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17PUo5-0006o6-00 for ; Tue, 02 Jul 2002 17:03:29 -0400 Original-Received: from ou.edu (jcast@localhost) by d-ip-129-15-78-125.cs.ou.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g62L32719402; Tue, 2 Jul 2002 16:03:03 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: d-ip-129-15-78-125.cs.ou.edu: jcast owned process doing -bs Original-To: Stefan Monnier In-Reply-To: Message from Stefan Monnier of "Tue, 02 Jul 2002 16:05:46 EDT." <200207022005.g62K5kg19923@rum.cs.yale.edu> Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:5370 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:5370 Stefan Monnier wrote: > > > > I don't have any strong feelings, but IMHO changing the major > > > > version number after only 3 releases is generally undesirable. > > > I don't see any good reason why this should be so. > > I don't see any good reason why it shouldn't be so, and I don't > > see any bad reason either. Even if you don't think tradition, > > conformance to the cultural expectations of Free Software users, > > etc. are good reasons, you have to admit they're bad reasons :) > What's the fundamental difference betweeen 3 or 4 revisions and 7 > (as in the Emacs-20 line) ? Adding cua, tramp, ido, the elisp > manual, calc, leim and more isn't enough to justify bumping the > major revision counter ? Why not ? > > > What about between v17 and v18 ? > > I don't think either of those existed. > I actually don't know but I'd be surprised if you're right. They > might have never been released, but I expected they existed. OK, let me expand on my comment: the major version number before 19 was (IIRC) 1: the version before v19 was 1.18. > > > What about between v3 and v4 ? > > I know those didn't exist. > I again think you're wrong. There was no GNU Emacs 3 or GNU Emacs 4. There were 1.3 and 1.4, but that was a minor change. > Yes, it has some importance. It's important for people to know > whether it's just a bugfix release or not. But as for what defines > a major change, as I said, this is very subjective. In the past, > Emacs revision numbers have been completely useless as "bugfix" > indicators and have only been mildly useful as featureset > predictors. And I haven't heard many complaints about it, and the > only complaints I heard were about distinguishing bugfix-releases, > which my 2-part scheme handles just fine. If we start making major releases on an annual basis, expect to start hearing complaints :) > The only definition of "major" that I could find compelling No comment on this > and that seems to corresponds to past practices So because past practice has been less than stellar at identifying what should be a major release, we should drop the distinction? > is "a major rework of the C code". That does not necessarily have > anything to do with what users perceive in term of features. So if > you consider major release numbers as indicators of "probably buggy > because it has a lot of new code", I could agree. But claiming that > we should distinguish between the jump from 19.28->19.29 and > 19.34->20.1 in terms of features is just not right, because to most > people around me, the first jump was more important than the second. What /was/ this crucial change from 19.28->19.29? I'm curious now (and given that there /was/ a 19.28, I'm wondering if there shouldn't have been more major releases in there). > > I don't think we have /any/ gain in convenience labeling the > > current trunk 22.0 over 21.4. And users expect major releases to > > be, well, major. What reason does Emacs have to dis-regard that? > Please read my other messages. If 21.4 turns out to be > yet-another-bugfix, we'll have to go through the code once again and > fix various references to it that assumed that it was going to be a > major release. I.e. the point is to choose the revision number long > in advance and independent from the number of other releases that > will occur in-between. That's a one-time cost. As I've pointed out, at some point my scheme would take over and (nearly) /eliminate/ version number changes. The only change that would be possible is if we change a version from a minor flip to a major flip, but that change would almost certainly involve changing feature sets, too. And then, :version tags will have to roll anyway :) > Stefan Jon Cast