Re: Preview: portable dumper

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Daniel Colascione <address@hidden>
> Cc: Paul Eggert <address@hidden>,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2016 13:50:33 -0800
> 
> > Until you're code is tested on more platforms, it needs to live someplace
> > other than master. That's what branches are for.
> 
> I'll test it on the systems I can before I commit.  We can enable
> compilation once on individual systems once we do more thorough testing.
> A branch is definitely not the right approach here, because you haven't
> established any firm acceptance criteria, and what criteria you have
> mentioned (write some documentation, test on more configurations) are
> things I can do before the patch lands at all.

Having new features on a branch is our standard development practice.
It allows the interested people to try the feature in situations no
single person can possibly create, even if that person has access to
several platforms, because usage patterns differ a lot.

We can establish pass criteria, if you like, but the only criteria
until now were "if enough time passed and no one complained, it's
ready".

In this case, we will probably also consider alternative approaches if
they become mature.

> The Cairo code doesn't work at all and *that's* in mainline.
> That's okay, because it's not enabled by default.

The Cairo code works, it just has some redisplay bugs that no one was
able to fix.  It was disabled post-factum, when we have learned about
those problems, unfortunately after its developer has departed.

> Branches are for experimental features that can't coexist with
> regular Emacs use and development.

This is simply not true.