Re: gnulib strftime imported into Emacs

[Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton@gmail.com>]

On Mon 31 Jan 2011, Paul Eggert wrote:

> On 01/30/2011 08:00 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
>> Could we please talk before making such disruptive changes in the
>> future?
>
> We did talk; for example,
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2011-01/msg01025.html>.
> I thought this was enough, but apparently I was mistaken.

That discussion seems to be an agreement in principle, not a concrete
set of changes. It would help if you published the actual patch, or a
location where it may be found, together with a description of the
change. This allows changes to be reviewed before they break the build.

>> Ideally, Windows related changes should be committed to the
>> repository at approximately the same time as the changes for Posix
>> platforms, but that's only possible if you let me see the changes
>> _before_ they are committed, and if we coordinate the commit to happen
>> when I have time to work on that.  Is such cooperation possible?
>
> I worry that this would mean that every time I want to make a
> nontrivial change to a makefile, I would have to run the exact change
> by you first.  And, as you say, you don't have much free time, and can't be
> expected to respond quickly; it might need to wait until the next weekend,
> say.  That wouldn't be a good recipe for development; it would slow things
> down too much on the trunk.

While the desire to avoid a slowdown is entirely reasonable, there is
another more important principle in any software development: do not
break the build. It happens occasionally due to an overlooked issue or a
bug, but it should never be done knowingly.

Your current approach is lilely to leave the Win32 build broken more
often than not, which is unhelpful.

> If this turns into a continuing problem, perhaps it would be better to establish
> a branch for Microsoft-related platforms, and to merge changes from the trunk
> into that branch whenever you have time.  People could then do Microsoft builds
> from that branch.

The Win32 does not need a separate branch as it is not diverging from
the main tree. It does need a little cooperation from developers on
POSIX systems to ensure that changes are coordinated where possible.

>> It also means that Tom will have to wait for yet another week with his
>> threading related changes
>
> Sorry, I don't get the connection.  Tom can't put in his threading
> related changes until Emacs builds on Microsoft platforms?

There is no point integrating a change that breaks the build if the build
is already broken...

    AndyM