Release date of Emacs 24.4?

Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Jai Dayal]

Hi,

 I am patiently waiting for Emacs 24.4 because it has a few features that
I'm really looking forward to (most notably, the ability to save frame and
window configurations across emacs sessions).

However, I can't seem to find any information as to when Emacs 24.4. is
expected to be released. Is this information made available, or is it
perhaps just not known yet?

Thanks much,
Jai

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Jai Dayal <dayalsoap@gmail.com> writes:

>  I am patiently waiting for Emacs 24.4 because it has a few features that
> I'm really looking forward to (most notably, the ability to save frame and
> window configurations across emacs sessions).
>
> However, I can't seem to find any information as to when Emacs 24.4. is
> expected to be released. Is this information made available, or is it
> perhaps just not known yet?

Currently Emacs is in feature freeze since more than a month ago. AFAIK
a release is planned to happen in a few weeks.

You can use an Emacs snapshot to check that those features (and other
you use) work for you. Compile Emacs yourself or get the binaries from
the usual channels (yor GNU/Linux distro, etc.) then report any issues
with M-x report-emacs-bug.

RE: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Drew Adams]

> Currently Emacs is in feature freeze since more than a month ago.

Yes.

> AFAIK a release is planned to happen in a few weeks.

Really?  There hasn't even been a pretest announced and distributed,
has there?  Where is the announcement asking people to test the
pretest distribution?

What about the pretest testing period?  Has that been reduced to
at most a few weeks now?

There are thousands of bugs reported now, including many newly
introduced.  Do we really intend to ship a release only a month
or two after closing the addition of new features?

Not adding any more new features is one thing.  Actually testing
those new features, and regression-testing old features, and
fixing known bugs are something else again.

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> AFAIK a release is planned to happen in a few weeks.
>
> Really?

Not sure. The maintainer's explicit goal is to speedup the release
cycle. Under this maintainer, past release's pretest phase was much
shorter than under RMS. I wouldn't be surprised if the release is made
two months after the end of the feature freeze.

> There hasn't even been a pretest announced and distributed,
> has there?  Where is the announcement asking people to test the
> pretest distribution?
>
> What about the pretest testing period?  Has that been reduced to
> at most a few weeks now?
>
> There are thousands of bugs reported now, including many newly
> introduced.  Do we really intend to ship a release only a month
> or two after closing the addition of new features?

That was not what I was suggesting. Emacs is on feature freeze for 6
weeks now (IIRC) and it seems to me that the maintainer wish to
stabilize (*) it enough to turn the pretest phase into a mostly
packaging test exercise.

I think this is a sensible approach. How much pretesters do we have,
compared against the number of users who use the development version of
Emacs on a production environment? Packaging and exotic platforms aside,
the pretest phase discovers a tiny amount of bugs.

> Not adding any more new features is one thing.  Actually testing
> those new features, and regression-testing old features, and
> fixing known bugs are something else again.

If you expect from the pretesters a thorough testing of Emacs, you need
a *very* long pretest phase (á la RMS). It is much more effective to
release the beast on a "good enough" (**) state and wait for the bug
reports from the multitude of users. Then fix those bugs and do a point
release. Conservative users can wait for the dot release, which I'll bet
that it will happen sooner than the "long pretest" release. And will be
more stable too.


(*) After using the development version of Emacs for 10+ years, I can
say that it is one of the most reliable software packages I ever
installed on any of my machines.

(**) No critical bugs, no significant regressions.

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es>
> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 02:19:11 +0100
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> Jai Dayal <dayalsoap@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >  I am patiently waiting for Emacs 24.4 because it has a few features that
> > I'm really looking forward to (most notably, the ability to save frame and
> > window configurations across emacs sessions).
> >
> > However, I can't seem to find any information as to when Emacs 24.4. is
> > expected to be released. Is this information made available, or is it
> > perhaps just not known yet?
> 
> Currently Emacs is in feature freeze since more than a month ago. AFAIK
> a release is planned to happen in a few weeks.

No pretest have ever taken a few weeks.  And the 24.4 pretest hasn't
started yet.

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Stefan Monnier]

> However, I can't seem to find any information as to when Emacs 24.4. is
> expected to be released. Is this information made available, or is it
> perhaps just not known yet?

Only Emacs knows, but sadly M-x when-is-the-next-release RET still has
a few serious bugs.
So we're left guessing.  My best guess is "before summer".


        Stefan

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Søren Pilgård]

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 2:38 PM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> However, I can't seem to find any information as to when Emacs 24.4. is
>> expected to be released. Is this information made available, or is it
>> perhaps just not known yet?
>
> Only Emacs knows, but sadly M-x when-is-the-next-release RET still has
> a few serious bugs.
> So we're left guessing.  My best guess is "before summer".

Here i fixed it:

(defun when-is-the-next-release ()
  (interactive)
  "An accurate estimate of the release date of the next Emacs version"
  (message "Next release is in %d days." (1+ (random 365))))

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Jai Dayal]

HAI GUYZ THANKS THAT WORKED GREAT! IT WILL BE RELEASED IN 42 DAYS WOW
THANKS!
..

...

hAI GUYZ IT NOW SAYS IT WILL BE RELEEZED IN 287 DAYS WHY DID YOU INCREASE
THE DUE DATE PLZ GO BACK


On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 9:23 AM, Søren Pilgård <fiskomaten@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 2:38 PM, Stefan Monnier
> <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> >> However, I can't seem to find any information as to when Emacs 24.4. is
> >> expected to be released. Is this information made available, or is it
> >> perhaps just not known yet?
> >
> > Only Emacs knows, but sadly M-x when-is-the-next-release RET still has
> > a few serious bugs.
> > So we're left guessing.  My best guess is "before summer".
>
> Here i fixed it:
>
> (defun when-is-the-next-release ()
>   (interactive)
>   "An accurate estimate of the release date of the next Emacs version"
>   (message "Next release is in %d days." (1+ (random 365))))
>
>

Re: Release date of Emacs 24.4?

[Stefan Monnier]

> HAI GUYZ THANKS THAT WORKED GREAT! IT WILL BE RELEASED IN 42 DAYS WOW
> THANKS!
> ..

> ...

> hAI GUYZ IT NOW SAYS IT WILL BE RELEEZED IN 287 DAYS WHY DID YOU INCREASE
> THE DUE DATE PLZ GO BACK

It's probably all those capital letters which git it all worked up.
Try to downcase all that and re-run the command.  It might not get back
to the original behavior, but it should (statistically anyway) improve.


        Stefan