From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Reordering etc/NEWS Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 22:42:34 +0300 Message-ID: References: <2wmz0iriyj.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1178739769 25759 80.91.229.12 (9 May 2007 19:42:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 19:42:49 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: JD Smith Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed May 09 21:42:46 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Hls3g-000580-6v for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 May 2007 21:42:44 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HlsAu-0001F1-3e for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 May 2007 15:50:12 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HlsAq-0001Ev-8C for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 May 2007 15:50:08 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HlsAn-0001Ej-SG for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 May 2007 15:50:06 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HlsAn-0001Eg-MS for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 May 2007 15:50:05 -0400 Original-Received: from heller.inter.net.il ([213.8.233.23]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Hls3Y-0005BA-S1 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 May 2007 15:42:37 -0400 Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 (IGLD-80-230-159-227.inter.net.il [80.230.159.227]) by heller.inter.net.il (MOS 3.7.3a-GA) with ESMTP id CNX50582 (AUTH halo1); Wed, 9 May 2007 22:42:31 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: (message from JD Smith on Wed, 09 May 2007 10:54:26 -0700) X-detected-kernel: FreeBSD 4.7-5.2 (or MacOS X 10.2-10.4) (2) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:70700 Archived-At: > From: JD Smith > Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 10:54:26 -0700 > > >From my perspective, Emacs is an ancient, deeply rooted culture, with > its own customs and beliefs, established long ago. I'm not sure what ancient culture and customs you refer to here, since you've left them unnamed and unexplained. If you are talking about long release cycles, then I'm all for making them shorter, but please, even under the most optimal setup, don't expect them to match those of other packages, even large ones, like GDB. Emacs is an extremely large package, whose humongous code cannot be mastered by a single individual, or even a small group of core developers. Even if we confine ourselves only to the C code, Emacs developers need to be experts in many diverse areas, such as Lisp language, character sets and encodings, display, GUI toolkits (5 for Unix plus 4 more for non-Unix platforms), signals and subprocesses, and some intricate details of executable image structure (for unexec). Lisp code is spread over more than 1000 files and covers even more subject-matter ground. I'm not familiar with any other GNU package that could match Emacs in complexity and expertise requirements in so many diverse fields. So releasing such a large package will always need longer pretest than most other software. Especially since Emacs is maintained by volunteers that come and go.