Re: It is time for a feature freeze (it is NOW or never).

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I think we may as well skip making another release from RC.  The
> question is whether we should call the next release 21.4 or 22.0.
> 
> There has been so much change that maybe the next release should be
> 22.0.

While there have been lots of small to medium changes and lots of
additions across the board, I don't think that there have been really
fundamental changes as compared to 21.0.  So the problem is not as
much that we have a big change warranting 22.0, but that we have
missed out on releasing anything between 21.4 and 21.20.

>From what we have planned right now, immediately after getting the
next release out, the Unicode branch will get merged and
consolidated, and the multi tty branch merged as well, if feasible.
Those are fundamental changes.  The Unicode branch is believed to be
in pretty good shape, but we want to have a consolidated _released_
version to merge it into.

Unicode, in particular with multi tty, will definitely warrant a
changed major release number.  It would appear awkward to change to
22.0, and right in the next step (after at most 22.1) to 23.0.
Merging the bidi branch, in contrast, will probably not warrant a
major release step, even though it will mean major work.

So in order to avoid version overkill, I think that we would stay at
21.x as long as we have "merely" extensive, but not fundamental
changes.

> I don't think we are ready for a pretest now.

Same here.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum