Re: [rmail-mbox-branch]: mail-utils

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2004 at 11:15:51AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Oh, BTW, of course the files should probably stay in their current
>     location in the Gnus distribution -- the renaming will only effect
>     their location within the Emacs source tree.
> 
> If some files from Gnus are moved out of the gnus subdirectory, that
> means we will maintain them as ordinary parts of Emacs.
> 
> It is fine if Gnus developers copy changes from these files, and
> contribute changes to them.  But they can't just install new
> versions of them as they do with the Gnus files.

I'm not sure what the difference between "contribute new changes" and
"install new versions" is.  Do you mean that a patch from a gnus maintainer
would have to be posted to the mailing list to be put into emacs (unlike Gnus
changes)?

I don't like such a distinction in principle, as it has the potential be
extremely annoying for me (as the person who is currently dealing with
interfacing Gnus and Emacs).  However I'm not if it's would be a problem in
practice, because the Gnus branch Emacs is using is relatively slowly
changing: I would likely implement such a restriction simply by giving any
Gnus changes to "non-Gnus" files a more thorough examination -- and expect
that mostly they would be perfectly fine (minor bugfixes and the like) and
apply them.

I'll it up to the Gnus maintainers to comment on Alexander's (forthcoming)
patch in light of this.  If these files are mature enough that they should
rarely be changed, there may be no problem.

-Miles
-- 
My spirit felt washed.  With blood.  [Eli Shin, on "The Passion of the Christ"]