From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: html-mode demanding a bit too tight Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:08:26 +0300 Message-ID: References: <87647ooxwm.fsf@zip.com.au> <462CC030.8030203@gmail.com> <87mz0y8vyk.fsf@zip.com.au> <85tzv2xrnh.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1177679410 9671 80.91.229.12 (27 Apr 2007 13:10:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:10:10 +0000 (UTC) Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: David Kastrup Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Apr 27 15:10:09 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HhQD6-0001io-9k for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:10:05 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HhQIv-0003Di-1H for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:16:05 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HhQIr-0003CC-6V for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:16:01 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HhQIo-0003BQ-OJ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:16:00 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HhQIo-0003BN-IB for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:15:58 -0400 Original-Received: from romy.inter.net.il ([213.8.233.24]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1HhQCT-0006zp-Lh; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:09:26 -0400 Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 (IGLD-80-230-36-220.inter.net.il [80.230.36.220]) by romy.inter.net.il (MOS 3.7.3-GA) with ESMTP id HSC48923 (AUTH halo1); Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:08:28 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <85tzv2xrnh.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> (message from David Kastrup on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:22:58 +0200) X-detected-kernel: FreeBSD 4.7-5.2 (or MacOS X 10.2-10.4) (2) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:70250 Archived-At: > From: David Kastrup > Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:22:58 +0200 > Cc: Glenn Morris , user42@zip.com.au, emacs-devel@gnu.org > > You may be basking in the illusion that this increases the quality of > the released Emacs. I severely doubt that. Actually, I'm positive that the quality of Emacs codebase has not improved, on the average, for quite some time. We are in a limit cycle, whereby changes are committed that could wait until after the release, those changes cause breakage, the breakage is fixed, then another unnecessary change is made, and so on. And the quality respectively oscillates up and down, with no visible trend. The only way to ensure that the pretest steadily improves the quality is to consistently enforce more and more stringent rules as to what changes can go in, until eventually the only allowed changes are trivial doc fixes and simple rewording in the manuals--and then stick to this stringent policy for a couple of last pretests. By contrast, it seems that what we do is waiting for a long enough period without bug reports as some kind of signal that ``there are no more serious bugs''. This is of course false, since a period of silence can (and usually will) be caused by something utterly unrelated, such as a public holiday or college vacation. Such decision policy simply means that we will release at some random point in time, and the quality of the released Emacs will be similarly random. (Yes, this is a straw man, but if someone can provide any other reasonable rationale for the current decision policy, please be my guest.)