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[AUCTeX-devel] Upstream support of XEmacs in AUCTeX


From: Stephen J. Turnbull
Subject: [AUCTeX-devel] Upstream support of XEmacs in AUCTeX
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:42:24 +0900

David Kastrup writes:

 > It has become clear in the last few years that the efforts of AUCTeX
 > developers to support XEmacs are basically a waste of time.

I'm sorry you feel that way; I certainly don't think so.

 > According to the XEmacs developer lists, there is no noticeable
 > interest in an uptodate AUCTeX distribution.

That depends on how you define "noticeable", and the date of that
statement.  True, the interest in an uptodate AUCTeX package has not
been noticeable for the last few years to an XEmacs developer
responsible for all of XEmacs andwith no special interest in AUCTeX,
with the exception of the interest shown by Uwe Brauer.  I believe Uwe
will tell you that we've been generally responsive to him, although
due to the differences between the XEmacs build system and that
developed by AUCTeX things are quite complex and with constraints on
Uwe's time movement has been slow.

But Uwe *has* been moving forward, and joined in the last weekss by
Mats Lidell, who is an XEmacs Reviewer (== as "inside" as an XEmacs
developer gets).

Bottom line: I would not say "no noticeable interest" any more, and I
don't think anybody else would, either.

 > while it would seem completely reasonable to me

Your opinion has surely been noted.  But "he who does the work makes
the decisions."  You've decided not to do the work, and Uwe has made
the decisions.  (In fact, for all I know he's done what you've
suggested.)

 > I would thus suggest that we discontinue maintenance of the
 > XEmacs-related parts of AUCTeX.

I have a better idea.  Why don't you and I agree to discontinue
maintenance of this flamewar, which hasn't moved a millimeter in
years?

With the time saved, I'll promise to put effort into (1) getting the
work done by Uwe and Mats into our CVS tree, and (2) getting moving on
(at least some of) the bugs and syncing that needs to be done.

For your part, it would be nice if if the tarball builder stayed
around (ie, you continue to distribute XEmacs binary tarballs for your
current release) until the work by Uwe and Mats bears fruit.  From
what Uwe wrote in another reply, there should be visible results
within a couple of weeks, but it's unlikely to be stabilized for a
while, and it will be a while before users learn to trust the XEmacs
distribution of AUCTeX to be up-to-date and reliable, I suppose.

 > But other than that, I don't see a reasonable return of investment for
 > our efforts to keep AUCTeX running on XEmacs.  I don't see us (meaning
 > the current core AUCTeX developers) having the resources to put forward
 > the minimum amount of work demanded by the XEmacs policies that would
 > get AUCTeX into a form accepted for downstream distribution.

I don't understand the combination of these two sentences.  "Keeping
AUCTeX running" is something that only you can do.  As volunteers, you
of course have "responsibility" only to the extent you accept it, but
"it would seem completely reasonable to me" that there would be
sufficient returns to doing so.

On the other hand, "getting AUCTeX into [the] downstream distribution"
is our job.  There is no real connection to "keeping AUCTeX running",
other than developers who choose to be members of both projects, which
at this time both you and I are unwilling to do.

Why not just let Uwe and Mats do their job?





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