RE: Periodical releases

[Drew Adams]

> >> Don't wait until "perfection" and release trunk more often
> >> with bug releases if needed. 
> >
> > No, no, no, please.  Just the opposite.
> > Bake Emacs _more_ fully before releasing it.
> >
> > Get it right.  Document it well.  Mention all user-visible 
> > changes in NEWS.  Fix outstanding bugs.
> >
> > Richard had exactly the right approach to releasing Emacs, IMO.  He
> > was attacked by some because they felt the release cycle was too
> > short.  I, for one, appreciated his thoroughness and insistence on
> > high quality.
> 
> Is it not possible to have thorougness and high quality with more
> frequent releases of smaller scope?  Maybe the problem (if 
> there is one) is that trunk is allowed to drift too far from a
> releasable state.  I'm just saying.

Not when there are large changes made for significant features (new or old).

Consider, for Emacs 24, (1) the myriad user-visible effects of radically
changing the `display-buffer'/window behavior, and (2) the significant
development effort related to bidi (non-trivial, takes time to implement and
test).