How to proceed with package and core updates? (was: Python mode failures with xemacs)

Mats Lidell writes: I wouldn't be opposed to making exceptions on a case-by-case basis for packages that have never worked with 21.4. Just insert (defconst pkg-required-version '(21 5 30)) (unless (apply #'emacs-version>= pkg-required-version) (error 'unimplemented (format "This package requires XEmacs %d.%d.%d or later" (car pkg-required-version) (or (cadr pkg-required-version) 0) (or (caddr pkg-required-version) 0)))) However, I wouldn't want to make a blanket exception just because it didn't work in the past -- I'd like contributors to at least try to get it to work with 21.4. Ditto individual features like :help in the menus. My understanding of the policy is that it doesn't say that our packages must not have :help in them for Emacsen that support it; just that packages that can work with 21.4 to some extent should not make gratuitous changes so they can't work at all with 21.4. Caveat: I may have to rethink that, since GNU has an explicit and enforced policy of *non*-support for older versions of Emacs, let alone for XEmacs. This may make many packages that are maintained in Emacs difficult to support in 21.4. However, most features can easily be supported for 21.4 in Lisp. To take a favorite example of yours, (defsubst syntax-ppss (pos) (parse-partial-sexp (point-min) pos)) could be added to fsf-compat somewhere. And in fact, the whole syntax-ppss.el is presumably (close enough to) 21.4-compatible (the Alioth CVS mess is why I didn't suggest putting it in fsf-compat instead of 21.5). This would allow us to encourage people who like those packages to migrate to 21.5. _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta