From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dmitry Alexandrov Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Do pretests reach end users? Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2020 04:31:50 +0300 Message-ID: <7dvk9ibd.dag@gnui.org> References: <28BB39D5-074F-4450-A747-C2BFB37AA482@gnu.org> <87pn9g6fuo.fsf@gmail.com> <83bll0ze1x.fsf@gnu.org> <1rlt4e65.dag@gnui.org> <83blkxw22x.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="36670"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cc: liwei.ma@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org, kevin.legouguec@gmail.com To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sat Jul 04 03:35:12 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jrX5D-0009SC-Gn for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 04 Jul 2020 03:35:11 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:53120 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jrX5C-0007TZ-6n for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2020 21:35:10 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:56006) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jrX2G-0006V4-Uq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2020 21:32:08 -0400 Original-Received: from relay-1.mailobj.net ([213.182.54.6]:33314) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jrX2E-0007cz-Eh; Fri, 03 Jul 2020 21:32:08 -0400 Original-Received: from v-1c.localdomain (unknown [192.168.90.161]) by relay-1.mailobj.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 5D9F11408; Sat, 4 Jul 2020 03:32:01 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: by mail-1.net-c.com [213.182.54.15] with ESMTP Sat, 4 Jul 2020 03:32:01 +0200 (CEST) X-EA-Auth: OUN03MIBZQcfgvgWDjDo9iL/KxJ2h6fh+IlounEaDmhcyuZED8Tzb5ETmXAzUaUkUa0VcHwuaHmMH3EY/kPF+uvxYzQB4/Hv In-Reply-To: <83blkxw22x.fsf@gnu.org> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Fri, 03 Jul 2020 09:21:42 +0300") OpenPGP: id=525F7E60AD812C2361752BB4C8B0F8548EE7F3E7; url=https://openpgpkey.gnui.org/.well-known/openpgpkey/gnui.org/hu/hr4k5tkxm6shwdc18su4bkm34w3dctjd Mail-Copies-To: always Received-SPF: pass client-ip=213.182.54.6; envelope-from=dag@gnui.org; helo=relay-1.mailobj.net X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: First seen = 2020/07/03 21:32:01 X-ACL-Warn: Detected OS = Linux 3.1-3.10 X-Spam_score_int: -28 X-Spam_score: -2.9 X-Spam_bar: -- X-Spam_report: (-2.9 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H2=-1, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001, URIBL_BLOCKED=0.001 autolearn=_AUTOLEARN X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:252650 Archived-At: --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Eli Zaretskii wrote: > Dmitry Alexandrov wrote: >> Emacs pretest release? Is that a thing for systems other than Microsoft= Windows and Guix? > > I didn't say "pretest release": there's no such thing. A pretest is not = a "release" Okay. (Though to me =E2=80=98pretest=E2=80=99 still looks like an adjectiv= e there.) > it's a tarball [with sources] https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.0.91-x86_= 64-installer.exe > meant to be tested by people who track the Emacs development. I believe, people who track Emacs development rather build from master. > Its difference from the corresponding Git branch is that it is a tarball = that builds like a release would, and thus one of its main purposes is to s= ee that the tarball itself doesn't miss anything (which would mean we need = to fix our procedure for producing the tarball). Aha. Thanks for explanation. Yet, I suppose, only a neglectable minority of bugs can be introduced by re= lease procedure itself. > And the other important purpose is to catch the attention of people here = and encourage them to switch to the pretest version instead of the Git vers= ion That is, it exists to encourage those who track the master branch to downgr= ade? o_O > IME, changes to the Git repository also take several weeks to generate re= ports about problems. Well, for me that=CA=BCs easily understandable: I normally use Emacs master= , but rebuild it only when its time to restart it for out-of-band reasons, = which indeed happens once in a week or even couple of weeks. I suppose, I = am not unique here. >> Unstable Debian comes with Emacs 26, Ubuntu gets Emacs from Debian. A= rch comes with version 26, AUR=CA=BCs =E2=80=98emacs27=E2=80=99 is 27.0.60 = =E2=80=94 an outdated February snapshot [1]. Unstable Nix, again, contain= 26th Emacs. Fedora provides only stable version of Emacs. Homebrew =E2= =80=94 guess what? > We cannot control the policies of the various distros Of course, you can! Just declare the next pretest version 27.1 instead =E2=80=94 and you=CA=BCl= l see dozens of various distros from unstable Debian to Termux (a distribut= ion of terminal applications for Android-like OSes) obediently picking it u= p. Current stable Debian will never pick it up, of course, so its users are sa= fe from any new bugs and features, and testing Debian =E2=80=94 only after = running it in for a few weeks in unstable. > and [we] cannot rely on them for being part of the pretest. Indeed, _now_ you can not. That looks like a problem to me. > Sometimes they are, nonetheless, presumably because the people who are re= sponsible for the distros read the announcements about the pretests Any example? With your clarification about what pretests are, I have to withdraw Guix fr= om the list of systems where they are available =E2=80=94 its =E2=80=98emac= s-next=E2=80=99 is built from Git. That is, the _only_ known to me system = left, where Emacs pretests are available for installation, is Microsoft Win= dows. > But it isn't the main means for pretesting. Sure. From all of the above we can surmise that main pretesters are Window= s users, who somehow learn (from Reddit-like resources?) about pretests and= download them from gnu.org. Well... Windows is the most popular desktop system after all, but I would = really like to see GNU Emacs better tested on secondary platforms, such as = GNU/Linux, too. And I see two ways to achieve it. The first one is to contact all distributors one by one, explaining them th= at they better be reading announcements for Emacs pretests in order to pack= age them in their unstable branches, as Emacs pretest is actually pretty st= able for today=CA=BCs standards of development. If anyone would like to do that, I have a suggestion, where to start from = =E2=80=94 nixpkg-unstable: | Maintainers: | Jason O'Conal , | Peter Simons , | John Wiegley , <---- | Adam Hose =E2=80=94 https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html?channel=3Dnixpkgs-unstable&= query=3Demacs ;-) And the second one is already mentioned =E2=80=94 just declare what would = be a pretest a release. > Severe problems, like crashes upon startup, are, of course reported much = faster, but a pretest version is always quite stable and devoid of such pro= blems. > > So I don't see how all this could help making a release faster. It can help persuade people in charge (such as you :-) to take advantage of= the control over GNU distributors they have =E2=80=94 and shorten the rele= ase cycle. --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iIMEARYIACsWIQRSX35grYEsI2F1K7TIsPhUjufz5wUCXv/cBg0cZGFnQGdudWku b3JnAAoJEMiw+FSO5/PnKcEA/0ituIOHNRGHb+PAYIs7FPOZWUNS4W3I8BaWk6rB taeRAP9JuqTb4Nje3Ads5Lz+qzS3GPHjlN0YWSkDkSOatFstCQ== =NrVs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--