Re: Emacs release numbering 21.4 vs. 22.1

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

no-spam@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > I think we want this change to be released in Emacs soon, if we
> > are going to put it into Texinfo now.  We should put it into a
> > 21.4 release that we are going to make soon from the RC branch.
> 
> I believe many emacs users are expecting 21.4 be released from the
> CVS head as a major feature update.

I am afraid so.

> To remove that confusion, I suggest that we decide _NOW_ that when
> CVS head will eventually be released as 22.1, and that we start
> preparing for that now.
> 
> We definitely have enough new functionality in the CVS head to
> justify upgrading the major number (and I suppose that the unicode
> branch will be merged to the trunk before releasing 22.1 -- right?).

Personally, I think this decision would have saved me a bit of
trouble.  Whenever showing around new features and being asked when
they would be available, my predictions have been wrong since the next
version happened to be just a bug fix.  22.1 would be a good reply.

Even if we are not talking about added functionality, at the time we
release HEAD a substantial change in stability, behavior, keybindings
and look is to be expected.  I think it would prepare people better
if we changed the major version number as well.

But we should then really incorporate everything that has a
reasonable chance of working.  The unicode branch sounds like a
candidate, as does the bidi branch.  They really should be available
without separate compilation if that does not mean a functional
regression in other areas.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum