Re: Emacs on OS X development

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es>
> Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 02:04:27 +0200
> 
> I'll suggest to use different branches for every port (including MS
> Windows).

IMNSHO, this is a bad idea.  Its only sure consequence will be
divergence and bitrot of code, at least for MS Windows, because none
of the people who care about that port have time to invest on merges.
(FWIW, I don't see anything different on the NS side, but maybe I'm
mistaken.)  Given our style of committing changes to the master
repository, which involves almost no discussions, let alone formal
peer review before the commit, which would involve explaining the
rationale for the changes needed to consider whether to merge or not,
and given the sheer rate of commits, this divergence will be fast and
cruel.

> This way you can avoid most part of the #ifdef crazyness, keeping
> the code much cleaner and responsability divisions better defined.
> 
> A consequence of this would be to have to distribute several source
> tarballs (one per port) instead of just a monolithic one, but I think it
> is a lesser price to pay.

The real price to pay will be the bugs we miss on each separate
platform, which are only revealed on the other, due to a different
compiler/library/environment/memory arrangement/whatever.  How many
times in the past bugs in the Emacs code were found on Windows (or
even in the MS-DOS port)?  Segregate the ports, and you will lose all
that.  In effect, the project will be split into several ones that
hardly ever communicate.

At some time in the past, developers understood very well the value of
the diversity for the quality of their packages.  I lament that time.