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Miles Bader | 1 Jan 2008 01:10
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Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr <at> thyrsus.com> writes:
> Boy howdy, did I get a faceful of it last night at my friends the
> Matuszeks' post-Yule party.  They're AI researchers and their parties
> attract a rather dizzying assortment of alpha geeks,
...
> I proudly mentioned my work on VC-mode, and got majorly dumped on for
> bothering with Emacs at all.

These people apparently treat software as some kind of fashion contest.
Do you expect us to put any stock in what they say?

-MIles

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Miles Bader | 1 Jan 2008 01:14
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Re: Looking for a new Emacs maintainer or team

Richard Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org> writes:
> A few people volunteered, and they could be useful members of a team,
> but (as I recall) they didn't include the most knowledgeable people.

Stefan volunteered, and he's extremely knowledgeable about Emacs, and
about software in general (as well as having a generally easy-going
temperment, which is good for a maintainer).

-Miles

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Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly it flips over,
pinning you underneath.  At night the ice weasels come.  --Nietzsche
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Mike Mattie | 1 Jan 2008 01:14
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Re: Looking for a new Emacs maintainer or team

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:22:53 -0800
Dan Nicolaescu <dann <at> ics.uci.edu> wrote:

> Richard Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org> writes:
> 
>   >       > Once Emacs 22 is released, I would like to hand over
>   >       > Emacs maintenance to one person or a small team.  The new
>   >       > maintainer or maintainers would take responsibility for
>   >       > making sure new releases are made and that they are
>   >       > reliable, and for focusing attention on priority projects
>   >       > for improvement.
>   > 
>   >     Is this still the plan?  Last time this was discussed on the
>   > list many very capable volunteers were found.
>   > 
>   > A few people volunteered, and they could be useful members of a
>   > team, but (as I recall) they didn't include the most
>   > knowledgeable people.
> 
> OK, if this is the cause of the blockage, then let's work on what your
> criteria would be for choosing the maintainer(s).
> 
> 
> One proposal was to have a committee with 3 people:
> 
> - a "technical lead" which is responsible for the "quality" of the
>   major modifications to the software (i.e. C and Lisp code).
> 
> - a "release manager" which is responsible for the release, including
>   documentation, copyright stuff, packaging, etc  (basically anything
(Continue reading)

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Dan Nicolaescu | 1 Jan 2008 01:27
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Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

  > > Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:41:08 -0500
  > > From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr <at> thyrsus.com>
  > > Cc: esr <at> snark.thyrsus.com, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
  > > 
  > > I proudly mentioned my work on VC-mode, and got majorly dumped on for
  > > bothering with Emacs at all.  The kids out there think we're a
  > > stagnant backwater, an old-boys club of bearded grognards that has
  > > learned nothing and forgotten nothing for the last decade.
  > 
  > Curiously enough, I'm having an opposite experience these days: a
  > bunch of extremely able developers who work for years with MS Visual
  > Studio came to respect Emacs, as a viable and powerful alternative to
  > the bloated and dog-slow Studio, even on Windows, to say nothing of
  > GNU/Linux (this is a dual-platform project, where software is
  > developed to run on both systems).  All I needed to do is introduce
  > them to some optional features, such as Speedbar, ebrowse, and gdb-ui,
  > and craft a simple .emacs to bind the various Fn keys to
  > compile/run/debug commands they were used to have.  After that, I
  > never again heard anyone of them laughing at "stagnant backwater" that
  > is Emacs.

Care to post an example of such .emacs? 
Maybe it can be used as a skeleton for a package for such users, or
maybe we can change some defaults to match such users' expectations.
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Dan Nicolaescu | 1 Jan 2008 01:48
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Re: Commit practices

Richard Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org> writes:

  >     Your opposition to multiple file commits seems to be based on the
  >     assertion that this "bloats the log entries of each file, making them
  >     essentially _unusable_".  
  > 
  >     It's hard to find this assertion valid. 
  > 
  > Perhaps that's because what's useful for me is not the same as
  > what's useful for you.

That is true, but please consider that what you consider useful also has
a HUGE cost, and the benefit seems to be only for you (Nobody else seems
to agree that there is a benefit at all). 

The cost is HUGE:
  - the multi-tty branch could have merged a few months earlier, it
  waited until Glenn and I had time to spend a few days rewriting the
  logs. The benefit of that: zero as far as I can see. 
  - the unicode branch is waiting for someone to rewrite the logs. 
Merging this branches later costs a lot because many more people could
use/test/debug/improve them. Time spent working on emacs by volunteers
is totally context dependent.

  >     Even in that absurd case isearch is quite efficient.
  > 
  > Isearch is efficient on the ChangeLog file, too.  That makes it
  > possible to see all the entries for file foo, one by one.
  > 
  > What the CVS log does (when there are no multi-file checkins) is make
(Continue reading)

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Eric S. Raymond | 1 Jan 2008 01:34
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Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 46, Issue 176

From: Dan Nicolaescu <dann <at> ics.uci.edu>
> [I think is better to refrain from fixing the code until the byte
> compiler issues are analyzed].

Noted.  I was about to go in and fix them, but I'll refrain.

From: Richard Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org>
> If it is a problem (and other people seem to disagree with you on
> this), it can't be helped. 

Yes, it can.  I learned earlier today that you expressed an intention
to hand off the Emacs maintainership after 22 was released.  If you
follow through on that, the new maintainer seems unlikely to have the 
peculiar restrictions you do.

I emphatically don't want the job.  But I'd like to see it pass
to someone who is at least willing to use a browser.  Then we could 
launch a web-based bug tracker on our Savannah space.  That and a
modern version-control system and a couple of monitor bots would be
good running start.

As you say, you have a lot of other things to do.  Actually, you shouldn't be
the Emacs lead maintainer for much the same reasons I can't be.  So pick 
someone you think has good judgment and let it go.

I strongly recommend that whoever it is should be at least fifteen
years younger than either of us, if that's possible among the
available candidates.  Given our image problems, I think the project
needs a front guy who can't possibly be dismissed as an old fart.
(Continue reading)

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Eric S. Raymond | 1 Jan 2008 01:57
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Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>:
> > I proudly mentioned my work on VC-mode, and got majorly dumped on for
> > bothering with Emacs at all.
> 
> Curiously enough, I'm having an opposite experience these days:

I completely believe you.  I think our accounts unify nicely if you
reflect that the people giving me crap were mainly Eclipse fans --
ex-Emacs users who think they've found something better.

On the other hand, anybody who's been stuck using Microsoft tools...
well, of *course* Emacs is better; an Acheulian flint hand-axe would
probably strike those poor bastards as an improvement.
--

-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
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Eric S. Raymond | 1 Jan 2008 02:06
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Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

Miles Bader <miles <at> gnu.org>:
> These people apparently treat software as some kind of fashion contest.
> Do you expect us to put any stock in what they say?

Well...at least two of them, to my certain personal knowledge, have
been expert Emacs users in the past.  (I'm thinking of David and Cyndy
Matuszek, in case anyone here has ever met them.)

They're not fashionistas. They have a belief, which is not badly founded
given the evidence available to them, that the Emacs project is old,
tired, badly run, and effectively moribund.

I can't say that I blame them much for this.  We have a lot of work to
do to re-establish the level of credibility we enjoyed at the time I
was last directly involved in the early 1990s.
--

-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
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Leo | 1 Jan 2008 01:19
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Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

On 2007-12-31 22:29 +0000, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     And that's why, when you block your projects from using modern tools,
>     it's a serious problem.
>
> If it is a problem (and other people seem to disagree with you on
> this), it can't be helped. 

I don't think other people disagree with ESR. I think people understand
how difficult it is to propose such a solution.

I really appreciate ERS's effort to save the Emacs project.

--

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.:  Leo  :.  [ sdl.web AT gmail.com ]  .:  [ GPG Key: 9283AA3F ]  :.

          Use the best OS -- http://www.fedoraproject.org/
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Leo | 1 Jan 2008 01:47
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Microsoft is Planning a new "Emacs.Net" tool

Hi,

This looks quite interesting:

http://www.douglasp.com/blog/2007/12/27/EmacsNet.aspx

HTH,
--

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.:  Leo  :.  [ sdl.web AT gmail.com ]  .:  [ GPG Key: 9283AA3F ]  :.

          Use the best OS -- http://www.fedoraproject.org/
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Gmane