Re: auctex 11.88 numeration scheme
> "Stephen" == Stephen J Turnbull
<stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
Uwe Brauer writes:
> I did some testing: I just modified in the Makefile of the auctex
> (still not upgraded to 11.88) directory the relevant string
This test is irrelevant. I'm not surprised that the Makefile
handles
this and generates the expected tarfiles. Make is basically a macro
language and doesn't care what you put in variables.
What matters is the behavior of list-packages and pkg-admin.el and
friends.
How could I test this?
> - the version I want to release is not strictly 11.88, but with
a
> little patch, thanks to Mosè which made a variable backward
> compatible. According to the Auctex folks, that is also true for
> elpa, the current version is not *exactly* 11.88.
Already worrisome. If they don't care about ELPA, then I
suppose
they'll let XEmacs slide too.
I am no sure what you mean by «slide». Despite the fact that
there are no XEmacs users among their main contributers, they
still care about XEmacs compatibility. Well at least if it
concerns a bug. If it concerns a missing feature, than maybe not,
but of course they are not to be blamed.
The auctex team does not release very often, but when it does, the «leap
forward» is notable. Most likely that strategy is what them fits best.
Currently they are only two main developers, David and Ralf are «there»
but don't really contribute with code. (Auctex is also a extreme mature
piece of software)
I hang around with some beta testing, but despite some style file
contribution a long time ago, I don't contribute any code
> - if we found a functionality in auctex which would need some
> modifications wrapped with a (with (featurep 'xemacs) I am pretty
> sure the auctex team would accept it. Now I had a look the
> Changelog[1] since 11.84 the changes done, would not affect
> functionality provided by auctex so I doubt it would go in their
> package.
(1) It's not a question of whether they would accept
XEmacs-related
changes. The question is whether they would bump the release
number just because *we* need a new release.
(2) Specifically, does AUCTeX distribute the XEmacs package
Makefile?
Many XEmacs-specific changes are changes to that file. We need to
distinguish versions so users know what they're getting. But if
they don't distribute that file, I hardly think they'll be happy
bumping the version so that we can change the file and release a
new version.
They don't. They have their own Makefile which even generates their own
version of our pkg, which lives happily in ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages
https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/download-for-unix.html
> However if I change now the scheme to 11.88 and we would make
some
> (internal) changes I would not like to call the new release 11.89, if
> 11.88-a is not possible I would even propose not to change the release
> number at all.
I don't think that proposal is acceptable. Users who already
have
version 11.88 will have no way to know they need to upgrade. To do
the upgrade I suspect they will need to remove and reinstall.
I agree: in an ideal world (say some 10 years ago) you are right. But
let me try at least once to convince you.[1]
Lets be realistic here: The traffic in Xemacs beta is far inferior too
the one in GNU Emacs devel, indicating a much smaller user base. Worse:
most likely the Auctex user base is even smaller. I don't recall any
auctex specific subject in the last 5 years [2]. Additionally a
typical Auctex user would be interested in an upgrade if:
- new exciting features are included, which basically means a new
release from the auctex team.
- a Xemacs specific bug has been solved, in which case as I said
the auctex team would care and might release a new version.
However the changes we made this year, which are reflected in
the ChangeLog, are
- .hgignore: Ignore .elcs in etc.
- doc/auctex.texi (Font Specifiers): Texinfo 5.2 fixes.
- preview/latex/preview.dtx: Expand CVS keywords manually.
In my judgement only the texinfo fix might be relevant to the average
user, while the fixes might not. So frankly I don't think the typical
user (out of a very small set of users) would loose anything when not
upgrading.
> [1] there is something odd, it seems some information got lost
when
> moving from CVS to mercury, because I remember the problems with
> 11.84 and the contribution of Mats, and this was around 2008/2009
> but it is not reflected in the Changelog, it seems that the
> upgrade to 11.84 is from 2014 which is wrong
No, that's correct. In fact the upgrade *did* happen in 2014
because
the 11.84 stuff was off on a branch in CVS and never merged to
mainline that I remember. That situation was continued in Mercurial
(I don't recall whether the branch got replicated in Mercurial or we
had to reimport it.) Then more XEmacs-specific work got done on top
of 11.55 (IIRC), so it was a small mess.
Uff, that is worse than I thought. So all the work Mats (mostly)
and I did for the upgrade was not reflected till this year.
To conclude:
- please consider that our internal changes would not result
in a release with a new release number.
- how can we test the notation 11.88-a would work?
- if none of the above is acceptable or works, than I would stick
to the old system, since the danger of having our 11.89 release which
does not correspond to the 11.89 release of auctex does not look
acceptable to me.
regards
Uwe
Footnotes:
[1] without hopefully running into a flamewar
[2] I had recently a discussion with some Xemacs auctex user on a
german TeX list and he also mentioned his grandchildren.....
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