Re: Emacs-23 release branch

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> I have just cut the release branch for Emacs-23.2.  It's at:
>
>    sftp://bzr.sv.gnu.org/srv/bzr/emacs/emacs-23
>
> Any changes which you'd like to see in Emacs-23.x should be installed
> there and only there (from where we will then merge it back onto the
> trunk).

Also, note that I intend to make a new pretest tomorrow, from the
release branch.

Now that the release branch has been made, please install there only
fixes that are regressions with respect to Emacs 22.3.  If you think a
non-regression fix should go into the branch, please ask Stefan or
myself, or discuss on emacs-devel.

Some of the changes in NEWS have yet to be documentated; if you have
some time, help in this area would be much appreciated.

As for the trunk, new features intended for Emacs 24 (and bugfixes not
safe for Emacs 23.2) can now be checked in.  However, if the change is
major (or if you have commit access but are not a regular contributor)
please inform emacs-devel first.

-----

This is also a good point for people to chime in on their plans for
Emacs 24.  Stefan and I have had some discussions about this; here is
our current list of major changes that we'd like to see included:

* The package manager (Tromey et al.).

* Bidi support (Eli).

* Better VC interaction DVCSs (Dan, etc?).
  As an exception, we plan to backport VC improvements to Emacs 23.3.

* Color-theme, or something like it.
  (Maybe using Custom Themes?).

* Concurrency? (Scrivano et al.)
  (Even if we can't get this ready in time, it would be good to make
  this an "experimental" compile-time option.)

* Lexbind? (Miles).
  (Miles, how realistic is it to include this?)

* TTZ's experiment with SVG progress bar, abstracted into a general
  Emacs library for embedded graphics.
  If we can do this, I would also like to seriously consider switching
  to SVG as the default image library, replacing our use of xpm (e.g.,
  the inline xpm images that we use for certain buffer widgets should be
  turned into SVG).

* GTK widget embedding code? (Joakim).
  (Joakim, how realistic is it to include this?)
  The preceding SVG widget feature might make this less necessary; I'm
  not sure.

Other stuff we'd like to see happen, if possible, are:

* Increased usage of the Semantic library by other parts of Emacs.

* Improving the Customize user interface (I have some working in this
  area that I'm going to commit soon).