Re: New maintainer

[Phillip Lord]

John Wiegley <address@hidden> writes:
> The question is, assuming Clang falls into first category, what is the
> situation for Emacs?
>
>   A. Emacs is only allowed to provide the feature for GCC, and must wait until
>      GCC makes it available (if ever).
>
>   B. Emacs can only offer the feature for other compilers too, but only once
>      it is able to offer it for GCC. This means we are blocked on GCC
>      development before we can support other compilers.
>
>   C. If Emacs can support the feature in a _general_ fashion -- so that GCC
>      could just as easily be supported as Clang -- then Clang support is
>      allowed before GCC support, assuming Clang has it and GCC doesn't (or
>      might never).
>
>   D. Emacs is allowed to directly support Clang features that GCC never will,
>      because this makes Emacs a better editor.
>
> I'm pretty sure D is out, based on RMS' past comments. I also think A is out.
> My question is whether Emacs project policy is B, C, or something more.

It's worth mentioning that we have been through all of this before. More
over there was a very clear difference of opinion between Richard and
the current (if retiring) Emacs maintainer.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00498.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00171.html

If I may be so bold as to speak for Richard and Stefan the answers were
B and D respectively.

I mention this not to stir up old arguments, but simply to point out
that these arguments have not been resolved in the past. While I am
hopeful that they will be resolved in the future, I suspect that trying
to sort this issue out now is a side-track, which should not block
discussion of the maintainership.

Phil