From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Do pretests reach end users? Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2020 09:32:52 +0300 Message-ID: <83sge7vlgr.fsf@gnu.org> References: <28BB39D5-074F-4450-A747-C2BFB37AA482@gnu.org> <87pn9g6fuo.fsf@gmail.com> <83bll0ze1x.fsf@gnu.org> <1rlt4e65.dag@gnui.org> <83blkxw22x.fsf@gnu.org> <7dvk9ibd.dag@gnui.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="35187"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: liwei.ma@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org, kevin.legouguec@gmail.com To: Dmitry Alexandrov Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sat Jul 04 08:33:52 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jrbkG-00092u-7V for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 04 Jul 2020 08:33:52 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60220 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jrbkF-0007Td-6w for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 04 Jul 2020 02:33:51 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:38442) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jrbjJ-0006j2-Hi for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 04 Jul 2020 02:32:53 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:58970) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jrbjI-0002li-8n; Sat, 04 Jul 2020 02:32:52 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=1143 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jrbjG-0000A4-70; Sat, 04 Jul 2020 02:32:51 -0400 In-Reply-To: <7dvk9ibd.dag@gnui.org> (message from Dmitry Alexandrov on Sat, 04 Jul 2020 04:31:50 +0300) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:252655 Archived-At: > From: Dmitry Alexandrov > Cc: liwei.ma@gmail.com, kevin.legouguec@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org > Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2020 04:31:50 +0300 > > https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.0.91-x86_64-installer.exe Wrong URL. The important one is this: https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/emacs-27.0.91.tar.xz > > meant to be tested by people who track the Emacs development. > > I believe, people who track Emacs development rather build from master. Mostly, yes. Which is why, when the release branch is cut, we ask them to switch to the release branch instead. > > Its difference from the corresponding Git branch is that it is a tarball that builds like a release would, and thus one of its main purposes is to see that the tarball itself doesn't miss anything (which would mean we need to fix our procedure for producing the tarball). > > Aha. Thanks for explanation. > > Yet, I suppose, only a neglectable minority of bugs can be introduced by release procedure itself. Perhaps; but there's no way of finding them except by producing a tarball. > > And the other important purpose is to catch the attention of people here and encourage them to switch to the pretest version instead of the Git version > > That is, it exists to encourage those who track the master branch to downgrade? o_O Yes. > > We cannot control the policies of the various distros > > Of course, you can! > > Just declare the next pretest version 27.1 instead Why not declare the Git version 27.1 (or, rather, 28.1 instead; 27.1 is passé), then? There are many absurd suggestions that could be made, but only a small number of useful ones. For some strange reason, I tend not to pay attention to the former kind. > > Sometimes they are, nonetheless, presumably because the people who are responsible for the distros read the announcements about the pretests > > Any example? I sometimes see versions like XX.YY.90 with telltale signs that they were not the pretest. Search the bug list if you are interested. > That is, the _only_ known to me system left, where Emacs pretests are available for installation, is Microsoft Windows. I believe you drew this conclusion because someone pointed you to the wrong URL of the pretest; see above. > Well... Windows is the most popular desktop system after all, but I would really like to see GNU Emacs better tested on secondary platforms, such as GNU/Linux, too. Actually, my hidden agenda is to deprecate the support for GNU/Linux and other Posix platforms, and leave MS-Windows as the only system Emacs supports. To wit: my main development machine runs MS-Windows, as the first step in that direction. And, of course, the pretest installer that you just told about, is only for Windows, for the same reason. But please don't tell anyone about this plan, not yet: they won't understand. > And I see two ways to achieve it. > > The first one is to contact all distributors one by one, explaining them that they better be reading announcements for Emacs pretests in order to package them in their unstable branches, as Emacs pretest is actually pretty stable for todayʼs standards of development. Doing that is obviously fine with me. It can only benefit Emacs development if the pretests are used and tested by more users.