Re: Contributing to Emacs Development

[Eli Zaretskii]

[Note that I've redirected this discussion to the development list.]

> From: address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 23:36:30 -0600
> 
>       I think we are going to have to consolidate the primary info
>  directory on Debian into /usr/share/info; and use update-alternatives
>  for major subcomponents for which various versions may simultaneously
>  co-exist (emacs 19, 20, and 21; native Gnus for each of these, as
>  well as the stand alone Gnus package, etc).

This problem is relevant to all Info browsers, not only to Emacs,
since all Info readers must be able to find the files.

Several Info features currently look for fixed file names, so renaming
Info files, as in emacs-e20, breaks these features.  One example of a
feature that's currently broken on Debian is "C-h C-f".

We need to find a solution that will work in all Info readers,
preferably without requiring any changes in those readers, for
back-compatibility with old readers (although I think this goal is
probably all but impossible to achieve).  It looks like such a
solution would need to be based on fixed alternate file names, because
some Info readers, such as the stand-alone one that's part of Texinfo,
are not flexible enough to support anything else.

>       Actually, knowing what emacs 21 contains may help to refine
>  these policies.

What do you want to know?  There are no major changes in the
packaging.  A few new packages are now bundled (Eshell, WoMan,
Ebrowse) and have their own manuals.