From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Neil Jerram Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: NEWS entries -- user-visible? Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:39:29 +0100 Message-ID: <87ski28s8u.fsf@arudy.ossau.uklinux.net> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1245011991 14754 80.91.229.12 (14 Jun 2009 20:39:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:39:51 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-devel To: Andy Wingo Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Jun 14 22:39:47 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1MFwUR-0006m0-7M for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:39:44 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:56824 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MFwUQ-0005PW-M7 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:39:42 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MFwUK-0005PE-GX for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:39:36 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MFwUG-0005Os-1a for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:39:36 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=35727 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MFwUF-0005Om-UJ for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:39:31 -0400 Original-Received: from mail3.uklinux.net ([80.84.72.33]:38713) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MFwUF-0000yu-HM for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:39:31 -0400 Original-Received: from arudy (host86-152-99-133.range86-152.btcentralplus.com [86.152.99.133]) by mail3.uklinux.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E494B1F6C3C; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:39:29 +0100 (BST) Original-Received: from arudy.ossau.uklinux.net (arudy [127.0.0.1]) by arudy (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C58E3801F; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:39:29 +0100 (BST) In-Reply-To: (Andy Wingo's message of "Sun\, 14 Jun 2009 20\:32\:01 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.4-2.6 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:8683 Archived-At: Andy Wingo writes: > Greets, > > It seems that some of the NEWS entries that are currently there for the > 1.9.0 release reflect awesomeness, but not awesomeness which users can > react to. > > Specifically, I am going to remove the following NEWS entries, which are > great stuff but thankfully invisible to the user: > > ** Guile now uses Gnulib as a portability aid > > ** Primitive procedures (aka. "subrs") are now stored in double cells > This removes the subr table and simplifies the code. > > ** Primitive procedures with more than 3 arguments (aka. "gsubrs") are > no longer implemented using the "compiled closure" mechanism. This > simplifies code and reduces both the storage and run-time overhead. > > Let me know any feedback you might have. I'll be working on compiling a > more comprehensive NEWS tonight and in the coming days. Hi Andy, Well, my first reaction was that we would lose something by removing these. But on reflection I think you're right. These entries are only meaningful to Guile-internal developers (i.e. people developing Guile itself), and are similar in information content to commit messages, only at a slightly higher level. An active developer would be following the mailing list and git repository, and so couldn't learn anything new from these. Also it's a good discipline to make sure that all of our NEWS is meaningful to users (including application developers, of course), and leaving in items like these would tend to obscure that overall picture. Therefore I'm happy with removing them. Regards, Neil