[rfc] developer documentation on user interaction

[Martin Pool]

2009/9/26 Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>:
[>  > Which is part of Martin's desire to split off a stable versus
>  > dev. So in 2.0.x we do bug fixes, etc that we try to keep as
>  > minimally invasive as possible. If it is going to break
>  > compatibility then it has to *really* be worth it.
>
> [Aside: I like the Python approach, which says it's *never* worth it
> (at the z level of x.y.z).  If it's going to break compatibility you
> document the bug and tell people "the doctor says, 'Don't do that!'"
> People who need the bug fixed are going to have to move up to the next
> version.

That's what we're aiming for too, but I won't use big words like
"never" until we have a bit of experience with this model.  The
distinction between "bug-compatible" and "compatible plus bug fixes"
is not always totally sharp.

> This is one of the main things that keeps XEmacs popular
> vs. Emacs in the corporate world: we promise that packages we
> distribute will work with 5 year old XEmacsen, and they mostly work
> with 10-year-old XEmacsen, whereas in Emacs recent versions of most
> packages only work properly on the as-yet unreleased dev version.]

That is truly impressive.  If only my wrists could still work with emacs ;-/

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>