Do you recommend Emacs snapshot?

Do you recommend Emacs snapshot?

[Jorge]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Michael Heerdegen
<michael_heerdegen@web.de> wrote:
> [...]  I (Debian) use the package from http://emacs.naquadah.org/.  At that
> page, there is a link to Ubuntu packages:
> https://launchpad.net/~cassou/+archive/emacs.

  Thank you for the information.  For the moment, I have worked around the
aforementioned bug.  But Emacs snapshot entices me.  Is it reasonably stable?
Does it have important new functionality?  Are there any regressions?

Regards

[Sorry, in the previous version of this email I forgot to edit the subject]

Re: Do you recommend Emacs snapshot?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Jorge <1gato0a@gmail.com> writes:

>   Thank you for the information.  For the moment, I have worked around the
> aforementioned bug.  But Emacs snapshot entices me.  Is it reasonably stable?
> Does it have important new functionality?  Are there any regressions?

If you are afraid of regressions, you shouldn't use the development
version of Emacs (or any other software package.)

Developers give early access to their software for receiving feedback
in general and detecting bugs in particular. Emacs is no exception.

Although it is very stable, you will see the occasional bug,
experimental changes, work-in-progress features, third-party packages
that won't work because they rely on undocumented features...

Morale: if you don't have time to deal with those issues and help the
developers to fix them, you'll better stick to an stable release and
upgrade only when you see a strong reason for it.

Re: Do you recommend Emacs snapshot?

[Michael Heerdegen]

Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

> Morale: if you don't have time to deal with those issues and help the
> developers to fix them, you'll better stick to an stable release and
> upgrade only when you see a strong reason for it.

Right.  Most of the time, it's very stable.  It's an absolute exception
that it's not usable, but it may happen, of course.  For me, fixed bugs
and new features count more than the potential new bugs and problems.
In any case it's good to have another version as fallback.  BTW, trunk
(from which emacs-snapshot is compiled from) is more stable in the time
before the next release (after the freeze), and less stable after a
release when new features are added.

You could also build emacs yourself.  Using the precompiled package is
easier, of course, but it also has the advantage that it will work with
Emacs add on packages installed at your system.  That advantage is not
so important anymore in the times of Gnu Elpa, however.


Regards,

Michael.