Re: CVS is the `released version'

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>]

    It has worked over the last months and years quite well, but do you
    really want to recommend people to use CVS Emacs when heavy development
    is under way? Say, when those unicode-2 branch gets merged?

Then I recommend people use an older version.  That is what the

    cvs update -D "10 days ago"

command is for.

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> says 

   ... A release is a point of stability, one where one tries to make
   reasonably sure that the overall consistency (of packages working
   together and with the core, and of code and documentation) is in
   reasonable shape, for whoever happens to use the software.

That presumes most people are not going to contribute, which may well
be true.  The view may not be a presumption, it may be an accurate
description.  But the issue may be one of morals, not evidence.  The
argument may be that people should find it easy to contribute.

In any case, David Kastrup's view does not reflect the experience
those who I have been calling (to myself) `the ancients'.  RMS is a
wonderful example of them, since he first wrote Emacs in the 1970s and
does not change habits if he can keep them.  (I am `ancient', too -- I
remember hearing on the radio that Sputnik was launched and being
amazed that the announcer had to explain that it was an `artificial
moon' -- but that is a totally different story.)


   But never releasing anything for which one has at least some
   inclination to stand behind it and call it "this is as good as it
   gets right now" is not a good idea either, in my book.

The point I am trying to make is that some people think Emacs is
released every day.  That is the opposite of `never releasing
anything'.  Often enough, but not always, you can use those releases.
But others do not think of those updates as releases.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                          GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    bob@rattlesnake.com                         bob@gnu.org
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc