Re: Gnus branches and sync with Emacs

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> RS> If Gnus developers want to start adding new features to Gnus CVS now,
> RS> we also need to have a bug-fix-only Gnus branch as well, say "v5-12",
> RS> which is synced with Emacs trunk (to be Emacs 23.2).  v5-12 would also
> RS> be used for future Gnus 5.12.* releases.
>
> RS> As there's no Emacs branch (or trunk) for new features, this would
> RS> imply that we cannot sync Gnus to Emacs for quite some time (dunno how
> RS> are the plans for the next major version of Emacs).
>
> First of all, sorry for my commit.  I had assumed that since Emacs got
> branched and the trunk was open, it was OK to commit into the Gnus trunk
> as well.  I did not check with you and I should have.
>
> Please let me know when I can resume comitting to the Gnus CVS trunk.

Whether the Gnus trunk should be synched to the Emacs trunk depends on
how "unstable" the Gnus maintainers intend to get.

My goal---and I think Stefan envisions something similar---is to have a
relatively short development cycle of a few months, during which we'll
insert a small number of new features (primarily CEDET) alongside the
usual bugfixes, followed by a pretest leading to 23.2.  If the Gnus
maintainers can follow a similar schedule, it might be practical to just
keep the two trunks in synch.

(The recent change of `mail-user-agent' may or may not be consistent
with this plan.  What's not clear right now is the amount of changes
that need to be applied to sort out the incompatibilies between
mail-mode and message-mode.  If the required changes end up being too
destabilizing, we should either switch mail-user-agent back, or fall
back on the alternative plan of using the 23.1 branch for 23.2.)