Re: Bootstrapping Emacs-23.0.60-trunk newly broken (GNU/Linux, Cygwin)

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:45:00 +0200
> From: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>
> 
> cd emacs
> ./configure
> make bootstrap
> 
> 
> Yes, it is heavy, but it is the only clean method that will guarantee 
> the patches do no introduce regressions.

Actually, there is no practical way to know for sure that changes
don't introduce regressions, in general.  While "make bootstrap" will
make sure a bootstrap works on the submitter's machine (and is
recommended to those that can afford it), it says nothing about other
ways of building Emacs, nor about other machines and OSes we support.
It also doesn't tell anything about run-time behavior, and as long as
we don't have a test suite, there will always be a significant doubt.
(Even when we do have a test suite, we cannot ask contributors to run
it on more than one system -- her own.)

IOW, I submit that asking people to be sure they don't cause
regressions in these circumstances is tantamount to asking them not to
commit changes at all.

So please calm down.  The development trunk will inevitably become
broken from time to time, no matter what.  If you must build the trunk
every day or even more frequently, and depend on the resulting binary
for your daily work, I suggest to make some arrangements to have the
previous working build available until you are sure the new one builds
and works successfully.