From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/33056 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Sean Doran Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: ognus Date: 31 Oct 2000 17:37:54 +0100 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <52aeblklul.fsf@sean.ebone.net> References: <2nwvetu80i.fsf@tiger.jia.vnet> <200010291739.RAA06135@djlvig.dl.ac.uk> <200010302322.XAA08221@djlvig.dl.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035169234 23133 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 03:00:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 03:00:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Return-Path: Original-Received: from spinoza.math.uh.edu (spinoza.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.18]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73E21D049A for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 11:38:50 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by spinoza.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAB18785; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 10:38:33 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Tue, 31 Oct 2000 10:37:45 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@66-209.196.61.interliant.com [209.196.61.66] (may be forged)) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA19215 for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 10:37:31 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sean.ebone.net (sean.ebone.net [195.158.227.211]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 84A3FD049A for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 11:37:55 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: by sean.ebone.net (Postfix, from userid 1113) id 2AA2D897; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 17:37:54 +0100 (CET) Original-To: Dave Love In-Reply-To: <200010302322.XAA08221@djlvig.dl.ac.uk> Original-Lines: 85 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:33056 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:33056 Dave Love writes: > I doubt many of them have absentee maintainers, a lack of management > and not even the ability to make a release or update a web site. Hm, I think it would be as easy as one of the usual suspects making a candidate release tag and fixing up things in that tagged branch until it seems "good enough" for a release, tagging the release, putting tarballs up on ftp.gnus.org, and doing the normal announcement. If he's around, some of all of this could be done by Lars, but I don't think his being buried stalls most of the hard work (i.e., everything up to the posting of the announcement & the installation of the tarball on the ftp site). The question is then what to do about pulling-up bugfixes into the release; obviously fingers should get broken for pulling-up anything incompatible into a release tag, and to avoid unnecessary broken-fingers, someone should play "releng", maintaining purity, making tarballs of patches against the released tarball, and so forth. Various software projects do this somewhat differently; pull-ups against the release tag and pull-ups against a second release_bugfix tag or equivalent seem to work reasonably well. As to the website and ftp archive, one of the usual suspects probably could convince him to cough over write access to his playpens, if they can do a reasonable imitation of his whimsicalness. :-) > The fact that this exchange is happening is indicative. I shouldn't > be doing the work I am and I certainly shouldn't find things change > under me like this without warning. (I'm not a beginner.) Right, beginners go to the ftp archive and observe "gnus.tar.gz", or they end up at http://www.gnus.org/distribution.html where they see useful information starting with, "Gnus is distributed as a compressed tar file of Emacs Lisp files". Perhaps the "development sources" further down the page is insufficiently scary to people who aren't familiar with how CVS tends to work in large multi-person projects? > So people wouldn't advise users to do that? No, users should not run development sources, unless they are prepared to deal with unexpected bugs. > How should things be stabilized and users provided with > useful fixed versions? (I know stabilization prior to > Gnus releases isn't traditional.) "Gnus is distributed as a compressed tar file of Emacs Lisp files". Unfortunately, the "An archive of patches is also available" is bit-rotting, but this would be a good place to put pull-up fixes against the compressed tar files. Gnus used to be released with such frequency, that inter-release pull-ups were mostly pointless. Releasing with that frequency again is another option, and cuts down on the releng activity. > PA> Aren't all the 5.8.7 point releases stable? > I don't know what that means. He means, the "gnus.tar.gz" files found in the primary and mirror archives are stable. The current gnus.tar.gz contains sources to version "Gnus v5.8.7". > Certainly things after 5.8.7 don't look too stable and 5.8.7 was > apparently released with mail-source-delete-incoming turned off, for > instance, even if there's notthing else seriously wrong with it. After 5.8.7 is "Gnus development sources". mail-source-delete-incoming -> nil is a safety feature for new users who have never set up Gnus before, and is a smart idea. Anyone who has been using gnus for a while (e.g., 5.8.6, 5.8.5, ...) may well have (setq mail-source-delete-incoming t) in her or his .gnus.el Sean.