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Re: Missing xemacs



Guy Maor <maor@ece.utexas.edu> writes:

> Kevin Dalley <kevin@aimnet.com> writes:
> 
> > The discussion was whether xemacs-19.14 or 19.15 was the best choice
> > for bo.  Could you please state your reasons for removing xemacs?
> 
> Moving 19.15 to bo was out of the question because of the time and the
> seriousness of bugs still being filed against it.  I never considered
> this a viable option.

I agreed with this conclusion all along.  There continue to be bugs in
xemacs19-19.15 which should prevent its release to stable.  This is a
reason to close the original bug which suggested moving 19.15 to
stable.



> > xemacs-19.14 is usable and better than nothing.
> 
> >  Perhaps I misunderstood our policy, but I thought that
> > a package should only be removed from stable if it has a critical
> > bug.
> 
> No, packages are removed from stable for the far more common reason
> that they're simply not ready for release.  Releasing software that we
> know is full of bugs while at the same time advising people to install
> the package out of unstable is silly.
> 
> We're not trying to compete with other distributions on sheer number
> of packages.

Most of your argument are sound, but your conclusion is invalid.
Releasing a package in stable which is full of bugs is not a sound
decision.  The number of packages is not the most important part of
Debian.  We also do not guarantee to have the latest release of a
package in stable; we just want to stable packages to be good
releases.

However, you conclusion is flawed.  I don't believe the xemacs-19.14
is full of bugs.  Its major fault is that it cannot be installed with
emacs.  While this is an inconvenience, it allows people to choose
their options.

1.  Install xemacs, but skip emacs.

2.  Install emacs, but skip xemacs.

The options are not pretty, but this does not make xemacs "full of
bugs".  I successfully used xemacs-19.14 under bo for many months.  A
person who wants to play safe can install xemacs-19.14, knowing it is
not the latest xemacs, but knowing that it is usable, as long as emacs
is not installed along with it.

Let's put xemacs-19.14 back into bo.

-- 
Kevin Dalley
kevin@aimnet.com


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