Re: Post-22.1 development?

[Dan Nicolaescu]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

  > Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
  > 
  > >     How about merging the multi-tty branch? The changes on that branch are
  > >     much more localized, so porting fixes from the trunk to the EMACS_22
  > >     branch should not be a big issue. 
  > >
  > > Does anyone see a problem with this idea?
  > 
  > Well, the setenv/process-environment thing I wanted to have a look at:
  > in the current state, it will require quite a few changes in existing
  > packages (including packages not distributed as part of Emacs), and I
  > think that the approach which I sketched out would pretty much
  > eliminate that problem.

Let me reiterate Karoly's (the multi-tty author) opinion on this,
which I also second as a contributor to that branch and as a (almost
exclusive) user for about 2 years: the environment variables thing is
a peripheral issue, and a rather obscure one.

Changing this requires about 50-100 lines of code (including comments)
and it can be done without major impact on the rest of the multi-tty
functionality (it has happened a few times on the multi-tty branch
already).

Karoly does not think there's a problem with the current
implementation (and I second that too), but he would have no objection
if David was to replace the current implementation.

  > Merging multi-tty to the trunk now could mean that some people start
  > patching up other packages inside or outside of Emacs to work with the
  > current environment variable settings, while others will change the
  > mechanisms eventually.

The changes in question for external packages probably amount to 1-2
lines of code. Plus I don't think we should be concerned about
external packages at this point. 

For the code in Emacs, if the implementation changes I volunteer to go
over and fix any issues. I guesstimate this to be less than 10 minutes
of work.

So in conclusion _my_ (quite informed) opinion is that this issue
should not stop a merge. 

Please let's move forward unless there are more serious issues that
need consideration.