Re: Do pretests reach end users?

[Phillip Lord]

Dmitry Alexandrov <dag@gnui.org> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Dmitry Alexandrov <dag@gnui.org> wrote:
>>> Emacs pretest release?  Is that a thing for systems other than
>>> Microsoft Windows and Guix?
>>
>> I didn't say "pretest release": there's no such thing.  A pretest is
>> not a "release"
>
> Okay.  (Though to me ‘pretest’ still looks like an adjective there.)
>
>> it's a tarball [with sources]
>
> https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.0.91-x86_64-installer.exe


Yes, I release this (in a rather erratic fashion) as well as Emacs-28
snapshots, to make the pretests (and head) more accessible to people. I
think it would be good to do this a bit more widely, either with a
deb/rpm/snap/flatpack/etc.



>> But it isn't the main means for pretesting.
>
> Sure.  From all of the above we can surmise that main pretesters are
> Windows users, who somehow learn (from Reddit-like resources?) about
> pretests and download them from gnu.org.
>
> Well...  Windows is the most popular desktop system after all, but I
> would really like to see GNU Emacs better tested on secondary
> platforms, such as GNU/Linux, too.



To be honest, I suspect GNU/Linux gets more people testing it, because
the users of that platform are more likely to test things. It's also
relatively easy to build there -- once you have it set up "git pull;make
-j", and run from in source rather than installing and you are done.


>>
>> So I don't see how all this could help making a release faster.
>
> It can help persuade people in charge (such as you :-) to take
> advantage of the control over GNU distributors they have — and shorten
> the release cycle.

I think this is a secondary argument. It would be good to have
pre-releases (and snapshots) available to install because it is a good
thing in itself. If it shortens the release cycle that is a bonus.

Phil