Re: ruby-mode

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Seiji Zenitani <zenitani@gmail.com> writes:

> I hear that the emacs trunk is now open to new features.

I don't think that this is an accurate characterization of the
situation.  There are several branches slated for merging, but the
details are not clear yet.  Some assessment is underway, however.
Much of it is tentative: no hard decisions have been reached yet.

> I think it's time to include ruby-mode to the emacs main
> distribution, considering the recent popularity of the ruby
> language.  The ruby developers agreed with this idea when I asked
> them in 2005.  Are you OK to include ruby-mode for 22.2 or 23.0?

It is not even clear whether 22.2+ will be just bugfixes or features.
Personally, I would lean towards making 22.* from the EMACS_22_BASE
branch and not put new package versions into it.  A new (rather
instead of an updated) mode might be borderline since there is no
merge work involved.

> How to start?

Making clear that copyright assignments for the whole code are
feasible and getting them underway.  But at the current point of time,
I don't think that the trunk has been declared open for new additions.
It is more like it is basically oked for non-trivial changes.  I don't
think it would be prudent to do package updates (or new package
additions), however, before we have merged the branches that are
feasible for merging.  Unicode-2 appears pretty much so, and it is
quite desirable to merge this before updates/additions since it
touches a lot across the board.

I am currently playing with the multi-tty branch and coming across
quite a few issues.  My vague first impression is that even if it may
be possible to make it compile under all platforms (not there yet), it
seems not ready for seamless work even on basically supported
platforms (here, GNOME + gtk+ 2.10): the list of issues in the
multitty README is not small, and I have encountered inconsistencies
and not-working material myself.

So my personal guess would be that unicode-2 would be the first to get
merged into trunk, and rather soon.  Once this stabilizes, it may make
more sense thinking about updating packages and adding new ones.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum