Re: [AUCTeX-devel] support for xemacs

[Arash Esbati]

Mosè Giordano <address@hidden> writes:

> 2017-02-22 19:32 GMT+01:00 Tassilo Horn <address@hidden>:
>>
>> So doing another release anytime soon where the compat issues Ikumi
>> found are fixed would be a good thing.  Maybe an even better plan was to
>> release 11.91 and 12.0 identically in parallel where 11.91 would be the
>> last XEmacs (and Emacs 21/22/23?) compatible release and 12.0 the normal
>> (recent Emacsen) release and to create an compat branch.  Then we could
>> have 11.91.x releases with just compat fixes for XEmacs/old Emacsen but
>> no new features, and with version 12+ we could start caring about
>> compatibility only for the last few Emacs releases.
>
> Do you mean that the branch would be for fixes only, so that in master
> we can completely remove hundreds of lines of compatibility code?  If
> so, I'm all for this option.

I think this step would then be mandatory if we go this route.  And I
like the idea of going that route.

>> I'm also thinking about maybe closing down our own git repository and
>> move over to the emacs-elpa repository and do only ELPA releases (after
>> all, you can do a system-wide installation of an ELPA package which is
>> the main cause for the standalone release).  Right now, the situation is
>> not overly problematic but there were times where Stefan Monnier fixed
>> tons of (mostly byte compilation) issues in auctex on emacs-elpa
>> (thanks!) and I really had no joy in cherry-picking those changes to our
>> own repository given that in auctex.git several files are generated
>> during compilation but are checked in in emacs-elpa.
>
> I'm not completely convinced by this (but I didn't have to wrestle
> with conflicting merges ;-).  What would be other advantages?

There was a long discussion here[1] about using ELPA and how it could
hold packages for Emacs in future.  My understanding is that a final
decision is not there yet.  But I see some advantages in being on ELPA
only.  First, it shows that packages there are more tight to Emacs core.
If this statement still applies:

    AUCTeX is proceeding as a GNU project with the long-term intent of
    merging it into Emacs.

then this would be a right step.  And if that reduces the burden of
cherry-picking, releasing etc., then it make sense since time is scarce.
Depending on the role of ELPA in future, it could also attract more
developers (I would not hold my breath for that, though.)

Best, Arash

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-02/msg00017.html