From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Periodical releases Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:41:47 -0500 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1325457722 25501 80.91.229.12 (1 Jan 2012 22:42:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2012 22:42:02 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Emacs developers To: Carsten Mattner Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Jan 01 23:41:54 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RhU6E-0002qG-16 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:41:54 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41499 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RhU6D-00040C-LP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:41:53 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:49535) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RhU6A-0003wh-6d for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:41:51 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RhU69-0004dE-Ar for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:41:50 -0500 Original-Received: from smtp-04.vtx.ch ([194.38.175.93]:53331) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RhU69-0004d6-2C for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:41:49 -0500 Original-Received: from ceviche.home (dyn.83-228-185-053.dsl.vtx.ch [83.228.185.53]) by smtp-04.vtx.ch (VTX Services SA) with ESMTP id 317C129B0F5; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 23:41:48 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: by ceviche.home (Postfix, from userid 20848) id CEB616614B; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 17:41:47 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: (Carsten Mattner's message of "Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:00:05 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.92 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-Received-From: 194.38.175.93 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 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.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:147142 Archived-At: > Maybe 2 or 4 releases as a minimum per year with less major > changes in each? For Emacs-21, the main time constraint was to get the new redisplay engine stable (with support for proportional fonts and such). Can't remember any such large change for Emacs-22, off hand. But for Emacs-23, there was a similar issue with the change to a utf-8 based internal representation and the new font handling. For Emacs-24, it was the bidi support mostly. These are fairly significant structural changes which are difficult to perform piecemeal and tend to introduce significant breakage which takes months if not years to test&debug (maybe partly for lack of a good regression test suite, but also because of very complex semantics, most of which is the result of accidental interferences between "independent" features). Stefan