7:55 p.m.
* Xemacs 21.4.0 "Solid Vapor" is released.
Xemacs 21.4.0 contains a large number of improvements and extensions
to the current stable version, XEmacs 21.1.14, and continues the
policy of maintaining compatibility with the mainline GNU Emacs in the
Lisp programming language and packages. XEmacs 21.4.0 includes two
major new features:
o "Native widgets" are supported on windowing platforms ("plain"
X11, Motif, MS Windows, and GTK+). GUI components, as simple as
buttons or as complex as a MS Windows file selector, can be
incorporated in XEmacs user interfaces. The programming interface
treats them as a subtype of the primitive Lisp glyph type, the
fundamental API for handling images and displaying text in XEmacs.
o The GTK+ toolkit is supported for X11. This includes the GNOME
widget set and the advanced GUI design toolkit, libglade. GTK+ is
considered experimental in the 21.4 series, and will not be built
in by default. It is not yet fully integrated with the "native
widget" support, and improvements are constrained to minimize
impact on the rest of XEmacs. GTK+ is quite functional, but still
unstable, and developers interested in working on GTK+ support
probably should concentrate on the development series (version 21.5).
A few examples of other significant new features include:
o Extended database support, including improvements to the LDAP and
Berkeley DB support, and new wrappers for Postgresql and Berkeley
DB version 3.
o Support for EsounD.
o Better support for MS Windows, including printer support and a new
"net installer". Standard Windows-style installers (Wise and
Installshield) are planned for integration in 21.4.x updates.
For more information about user-visible changes, see etc/NEWS (the
definitive source), and the release page,
http://www.xemacs.org/Releases/Public-21.2/.
For general information about XEmacs, the developers, and the user
community, see our home page,
http://www.xemacs.org/.
* XEmacs 21.4.0 is "gamma" software.
Besides the usual "no warranty" disclaimer (see etc/WARRANTY, sections
10 and 11), we are now experimenting with a level of stability
intermediate between "beta" and "stable", dubbed "gamma".
At this
point all the developers and most of our beta testers trust the 21.4
code base with all their editing needs. However, we recognize that
(a) these users are not fully representative of the user community,
(b) there is a "point oh" effect, and (c) there have been personnel
changes (not least, an inexperienced release manager). For all these
reasons, for users who absolutely must minimize risk, we continue to
recommend the 21.1 series.
However, almost users will get very high reliability from XEmacs 21.4,
and in return, access to many new features and improved functionality.
No new destabilizing code will be added; each release in the 21.4
series should be strictly more stable and bug-free than the preceding
one. We also recommend the 21.4 series to distribution packagers
(such as Linux distributions and the open source BSD "ports" or
"packages" maintainers) for their "testing" and
"development"
distributions.
Since this is a new format, we don't have much directly relevant
experience. However, experience with past releases suggests that we
can hope to promote XEmacs 21.4 to "stable" status after about 6
weeks.
* Getting XEmacs 21.4.0
XEmacs 21.4.0 is available in source form, including pre-compiled
"core" Lisp libraries and pre-built Info files, from ftp.xemacs.org
and mirrors (http://www.xemacs.org/Download/index.html#mirror_index).
See
http://www.xemacs.org/Download/
for general information about downloading XEmacs. (It will be updated
to reflect the latest information about 21.4.0 shortly; our Webmaster
is taking a well-earned vacation.) For those wedded to their old
command-line FTP client, the following URLs may be useful:
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-21.4/xemacs-21.4.0.tar.gz
or build the Lisp and Info from source, saving download time, with
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-21.4/xemacs-21.4.0-src.tar.gz
In either case, you need the "packaged Lisp" for more than the most
basic functionality. You may use packages previously installed for
use with XEmacs 21.1 or later without change. For new installations,
the "SUMO" distribution of (almost) all packaged Lisp is available as
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/packages/xemacs-sumo.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/packages/xemacs-mule-sumo.tar.gz
The latter should be installed only if you are building XEmacs with
the MULE multilingual support; it contains Lisp files that cannot be
correctly loaded by a unibyte XEmacs. See README.packages.
XEmacs 21.4.0 is also available via anonymous CVS. To get the latest
in the 21.4 series, check out (or update) with the "release-21-4"
tag. This should be sufficient for almost all users; from now on
patches will be carefully screened to ensure that every release is
more stable than the last. If for some reason you specifically want
the "point oh" release, use the "r21-4-0" tag.
See http://cvs.xemacs.org/ for general instructions on getting XEmacs
via anonymous CVS.
Binary kits are not available at this time, except for the MS Windows
platform. The "netinstaller" is available as
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/windows/setup.exe
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/windows/setup.ini
and will automatically fetch binaries and Lisp packages, and set up
your system. Since the netinstaller uses prebuilt binaries, it lags
the source release by a few days.
We are considering providing binary kits for important platforms that
lack independent distributors (a la the Linux "distributions" or the
FreeBSD "ports" maintainers) for at least some releases once 21.4 is
accepted as "stable". Volunteers should contact the Release Manager,
"Stephen Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org>, and let me know what
platforms you can build for.
* Important notice for CVS users:
The CVS Repository structure has been rationalized thanks to Michael
Sperber. The development code is now on the trunk. There are several
active branches, each with per-release tags of the form "r21-4-0"
(major-minor-patchlevel), and a branch tag which always gives the tip:
Branch Branch tag Release tag
Development trunk (21.5): none r21-5-xx
"Gamma" branch (21.4): release-21-4 r21-2-xx
Stable branch (21.1): release-21-1 r21-1-xx
The trunk has a special "moving" release tag, "r21-5-latest-beta".
This is updated with each release to reflect the most recent beta
release. (The Beta Release Maintainer makes some effort to ensure
that beta releases at least build; there is no way to make such a
guarantee for the tip of the trunk in our development model.)
N.B. Until a 21.5 beta is released, the trunk will show a version of
21.2.46 "Urania", because that is the last beta in the series. (cvs
diff'ing the trunk against Urania will show some differences, but
version.sh hasn't changed yet.) "r21-5-latest-beta" was initialized
to reflect this state of affairs.
There is no "moving" release tag for stable versions; just use "-r
release-21-1" if you need the current release of version 21.1, and "-r
release-21-4" for 21.4.
To update an existing CVS checkout to the trunk (development), use the
-A flag to cvs update, or simply cvs checkout with no -r flag. To
checkout or update to one of the other branches, use the -r flag with
the appropriate branch tag. http://cvs.xemacs.org/ has more
information. It is in the process of being updated, so some
information about tags may be inaccurate for a few days.
* Thanks
... to all the developers, reviewers, and testers; to the
Electrotechnical Laboratory and BeOpen.com for financial support; to
Tux.org and SourceForge[tm] for hosting services; and to our users.
* Apologies
The targeted release date of March 1 was too aggressive, resulting in
6 weeks' delay. We hope you find it worth the wait.
No, I'm not using the latest and greatest XEmacs to write this. Next
time....
April 16, 2001
XEmacs 21.4 Release Manager
Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org>
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."
4:22 a.m.
New subject: [Errata] XEmacs 21.4.0 "Solid Vapor" is released.
Sorry about the multiple posts of the announcement and these errata;
I'm new at this.
>>>> "sjt" == Stephen Turnbull, XEmacs 21 4
Release Manager <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
sjt> * Getting XEmacs 21.4.0
sjt> [...] Binary kits are not available at this time, except for
sjt> the MS Windows platform. The "netinstaller" is available as
Sorry, the _installer_ (setup.exe) is available, but ...
sjt> ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/windows/setup.exe
sjt> ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/windows/setup.ini
... the current setup.ini is incorrect, and I took its XEmacs version
value (21.2.47) at face value. I inferred that Windows binaries were
lagging source releases by only a day or two. This is not the case; I
jumped the gun.
This error is my responsibility, and I apologize for the confusion.
sjt> and will automatically fetch binaries and Lisp packages, and
sjt> set up your system. Since the netinstaller uses prebuilt
sjt> binaries, it lags the source release by a few days.
We certainly do intend to support the netinstaller, but it will take
some time.
There will be a follow-up announcement when these are avvailable.
sjt> * Important notice for CVS users:
sjt> [...]
sjt> Branch Branch tag Release tag
sjt> "Gamma" branch (21.4): release-21-4 r21-2-xx
As noted correctly elsewhere in the announcement, the release tags for
the gamma branch are r21-4-xx.
April 17, 2001
XEmacs 21.4 Release Manager
Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org>
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."
6:12 p.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
If my dialup network connection drops, but the nameserver is still
running, XEmacs hangs evidently forever, trying to learn something
about its network environment. "strace xemacs -q" shows that it gets
stuck in poll(2), looking for data from the nameserver.
Oddly, this occurs on systems where /etc/nsswitch.conf contains
"hosts: files dns" and /etc/hosts contains entries for both localhost
and the machine's own name.
If the link is dead *and* the nameserver is also dead, XEmacs does not
delay startup. If the nameserver is killed manually after XEmacs has
gotten into the poll(2) wait, it resumes initialization after some
timeout.
Why should XEmacs care at all about network matters during startup?
And even if it has a reason to care a little, shouldn't there be
failover handling, so as not simply to sit dead? I waited about 10
minutes the first time this occurred, leading to my conclusion that
XEmacs seemingly will hang forever in this case.
--karl
1:35 a.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
>>>> "Karl" == Karl Kleinpaste
<karl(a)charcoal.com> writes:
Karl> If my dialup network connection drops, but the nameserver is
Karl> still running, XEmacs hangs evidently forever, trying to
Karl> learn something about its network environment. "strace
Karl> xemacs -q" shows that it gets stuck in poll(2), looking for
Karl> data from the nameserver.
Probably IPv6. From PROBLEMS:
**** New problem: IPv6 CNAME lookup
A newer problem is due to XEmacs changing to use the modern
getaddrinfo() interface from the older gethostbyname() interface. The
solution above is insufficient, because getaddrinfo() by default tries
to get IPv6 information for localhost. This always involves a dns
lookup to get the CNAME, and the strategies above don't work. It then
falls back to IPv4 behavior. This is good[tm]; trust us.
***** Robust network case
Configure your network so that there are no nameservers configured
until the network is actually running. getaddrinfo() will not try to
access a nameserver that isn't configured.
***** Flaky network case
If you have a flaky modem or DSL connection that can be relied on only
to go down whenever you want to bring XEmacs up, you need to force
IPv4 behavior. Explicitly setting DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0 (or whatever
is appropriate) works in most cases.
If you cannot or do not want to do that, you can hard code IPv4
behavior in src/process-unix.c. This is bad[tm], on your own head be
it. In the function unix_canonicalize_host_name() about ten lines
down, change the statement
hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC;
to
hints.ai_family = PF_INET;
and rebuild XEmacs.
getaddrinfo() is also called in src/sysdep.c:init_system_name() and in
src/process-unix.c:unix_open_network_stream(). It should not be
useful to make this change in either of those places.
Karl> Why should XEmacs care at all about network matters during
Karl> startup?
Those Who Know insist that this is a feature, and that you should fix
your network configuration.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."
2:09 a.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull(a)sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> writes:
Probably IPv6. From PROBLEMS:
**** New problem: IPv6 CNAME lookup
I have never configured anything for IPv6, anywhere.
And there are no CNAMEs involved at all.
> Why should XEmacs care at all about network matters during
> startup?
Those Who Know insist that this is a feature, and that you should
fix your network configuration.
Those Who Know are wrong, and my network configuration is actually
quite robust. Modem links drop; this is a fact of life, and trying to
blame other software's (XEmacs') misbehavior on this unavoidable
condition is an incorrect shifting of blame. Every time my link
drops, my interface autodetect scripts set about bringing it back up,
with the result that it is never gone for more than a few minutes; it
was mere happenstance that I noticed XEmacs' startup failure today
just when, by ¿bad? luck, I was starting XEmacs right when the link
had dropped.
--karl
2:40 a.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
Karl Kleinpaste writes:
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull(a)sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
writes:
> Probably IPv6. From PROBLEMS:
> **** New problem: IPv6 CNAME lookup
I have never configured anything for IPv6, anywhere.
And there are no CNAMEs involved at all.
>> Why should XEmacs care at all about network matters during
>> startup?
> Those Who Know insist that this is a feature, and that you should
> fix your network configuration.
Those Who Know are wrong, and my network configuration is actually
quite robust. Modem links drop; this is a fact of life, and trying to
blame other software's (XEmacs') misbehavior on this unavoidable
condition is an incorrect shifting of blame. Every time my link
drops, my interface autodetect scripts set about bringing it back up,
with the result that it is never gone for more than a few minutes; it
was mere happenstance that I noticed XEmacs' startup failure today
just when, by ¿bad? luck, I was starting XEmacs right when the link
had dropped.
--karl
I have to jump in and heartily agree with Karl here.
First citing 'Those Who Know' without references gets my hackles up.
In these days of instant access, it would be simple for you to look up
the appropriate RFC and cite it to us, complete with a URL. Citing
'Those Who Know' as the absent, unassailable authority takes us back
to out mothers saying 'You can't have it because I said so'.
Today I live on a Linux laptop, using dhcp to connect me to the
outside world when and if I need to tap into the nearly ubiquitous
flow of network traffic around me. My address will change. The
system administrator will break DNS.
The system administrator might even wish to use XEmacs to fix the
broken nameserver!
XEmacs should only seek nameservice when I need it! (We can actually
learn from Windozes here - laptops get by just fine with ethernet
connections getting plugged in and out)
I mean some of us still set EDITOR to be xemacs. On a 850 MHz
Pentium, having xemacs fire up because you typed crontab -e is no
problem. But it would be a problem if it forced a dial up from my
modem through my cell phone at $1 per minute to find out that I am
actually not using IPv6.
--
//' Michael McNamara <mac(a)verisity.com>
_ // Sr VP Technology 650-934-6888
\ // Verisity Design 650-934-6801 FAX
\// <http://www.verisity.com> 408-930-6875 Cell
--------------------------------------------------------------
Get my verilog emacs mode from <http://www.verilog.com>
5:32 a.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
Karl Kleinpaste writes:
> Those Who Know are wrong,
I agreed at the time and still do. OK ...
Would a run-time command-line option be satisfactory? With a
configure option to determine whether getaddrinfo is IPv6-ly correct
or not by default? N.B. I'm not willing to go in the direction of Do
The Right Thing for the 21.4 series because that would involve second-
guessing the user and the standard AFAICT. And I think it has to be a
command-line option because this lookup gets done before X resources
or .emacs gets parsed.
I don't know when this will get implemented, though. I personally do
not have time for the near future (2-4 weeks), given a simple
workaround (set DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0).
I would be interested in a specification of Do The Right Thing for
21.5 (probably to be released in September). I don't know who would
implement it (I'm probably not competent, see below), so I can't
promise it would be in by then. But I'd try; I've been bitten by this
one too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further info and philosophical BS you may or may not want to know about:
I don't know about this stuff, so I accepted the judgement of the
people who approved or implemented the patches in the first place (I
was not even on XEmacs Review at the time) when I wrote the PROBLEMS
entry.
>>>> "Michael" == Michael McNamara
<mac(a)verisity.com> writes:
Michael> First citing 'Those Who Know' without references gets my
Michael> hackles up.
Sorry about that. I'll try to avoid obscure sarcasm in the future.
(I'm new at being a "public face of XEmacs.")
Anyway, that's exactly what I got when I bitched about it at the time.
Try Martin Buchholz <martin(a)xemacs.org> as the person most likely to
have approved the patch. Citing, IIRC, core members of the IPv6 group
at the WIDE project.
See the thread rooted at
http://www.xemacs.org/list-archives/xemacs-beta/200007/msg00348.html
specifically
http://www.xemacs.org/list-archives/xemacs-beta/200007/msg00374.html
Searching "IPv6" at http://www.xemacs.org/list-archives/xemacs-beta/
will get you a couple more threads. Now you have all the references I
do. I don't recall any RFCs being mentioned, but maybe I've just
forgotten.
Michael> In these days of instant access, it would be simple for
Michael> you to look up
I am not an expert on network stuff, nor the standards, and was not
involved in the implementation of IPv6 in XEmacs. It would be simple,
yes, but time-consuming for me personally---I don't know exactly where
to look, and would have to confirm that the reference I gave actually
said what I have cited others as saying.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."
9:32 p.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
Stephen J. Turnbull writes:
Karl Kleinpaste writes:
>> Those Who Know are wrong,
I agreed at the time and still do. OK ...
I don't know when this will get implemented, though. I personally do
not have time for the near future (2-4 weeks), given a simple
workaround (set DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0).
This probably is acceptable, and appears on the face not to break the
common case where one is running XEmacs on the local computer.
However, consider a small shop, that isn't running DNS locally, but
uses on demand ISDN calling? Imagine in such a shop I log in from my
desktop to a local server. How should I set my DISPLAY to avoid a
nameserver query?
I was in such a shop, where DNS was not run internally, but lookups
that were not satisfied by yellow pages were directed to the
nameserver from our ISP, as in:
hosts: xfn nisplus dns [NOTFOUND=return] files
>>>>> "Michael" == Michael McNamara
<mac(a)verisity.com> writes:
Michael> First citing 'Those Who Know' without references gets my
Michael> hackles up.
Sorry about that. I'll try to avoid obscure sarcasm in the future.
(I'm new at being a "public face of XEmacs.")
Anyway, that's exactly what I got when I bitched about it at the time.
Try Martin Buchholz <martin(a)xemacs.org> as the person most likely to
have approved the patch. Citing, IIRC, core members of the IPv6 group
at the WIDE project.
See the thread rooted at
http://www.xemacs.org/list-archives/xemacs-beta/200007/msg00348.html
specifically
http://www.xemacs.org/list-archives/xemacs-beta/200007/msg00374.html
Searching "IPv6" at http://www.xemacs.org/list-archives/xemacs-beta/
will get you a couple more threads. Now you have all the references I
do. I don't recall any RFCs being mentioned, but maybe I've just
forgotten.
Michael> In these days of instant access, it would be simple for
Michael> you to look up
I am not an expert on network stuff, nor the standards, and was not
involved in the implementation of IPv6 in XEmacs. It would be simple,
yes, but time-consuming for me personally---I don't know exactly where
to look, and would have to confirm that the reference I gave actually
said what I have cited others as saying.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."
2:24 a.m.
New subject: 21.4 hangs in the absence of a net connection
>>>> "Michael" == Michael McNamara
<mac(a)verisity.com> writes:
Michael> However, consider a small shop, that isn't running DNS
Michael> locally, but uses on demand ISDN calling? Imagine in
Michael> such a shop I log in from my desktop to a local server.
Michael> How should I set my DISPLAY to avoid a nameserver query?
Depends on what is being looked up---I hadn't yet thought the issue
through to this point. If it's the X server host (your desktop), all
is groovy. If it's the X client (the login host), which is what I
remember, I guess you're back in XEmacs 21.1-land. Ouch.[1]
I greatly appreciate your patience and care in explaining, and it
certainly has bumped the issue's priority for me a couple of notches.
Footnotes:
[1] Well, if using XEmacs 21.1 is what you call "pain," please
introduce me to what you call "pleasure". ;-)
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
|Answer: "The sound of an innocent desert camelherd dropped headfirst in|
|the deep water." Question: "What is *plooshoom*?"|
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participants (4)
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Stephen J. Turnbull