That emacspeak problem...

[David Kastrup]

I have uploaded new RPMs that list emacspeak < 18 as a conflicting
package. While I don't know whether this will cover all conflicting
packages, it should be enough to barf at people installing AUCTeX via
RPM on an unchanged FC3 with Emacspeak (and for FC4, the problem
should be gone).

So this might help some people notice the real culprit before blaming
us or giving up.

It is up to Reiner whether he wants to build a SuSE RPM just for this
silliness: after all, there are no reported problems whatsoever up to
now.

Perhaps we should put a column "current issues" on our web page to
keep people up to scratch concerning known incompatibilities?

[Ralf Angeli]

Post by David Kastrup
Perhaps we should put a column "current issues" on our web page to
keep people up to scratch concerning known incompatibilities?

I'd rather release 11.55 soon. This would also fix the problem with
the compiler message.

[David Kastrup]

Post by Ralf Angeli

Post by David Kastrup
Perhaps we should put a column "current issues" on our web page to
keep people up to scratch concerning known incompatibilities?

I'd rather release 11.55 soon.

How soon? We have not have much feedback yet. Believe it or not, but
going through the complete release process, even when release notes
and manuals and version numbers and stuff have already been done by
somebody else, rarely takes less than several hours. Ok, it might be
somewhat faster if not many build-critical changes have accumulated
(which force me to restart the release process from scratch). But
going through all the packaging, signing, uploading, announcing,
updating Freshmeat and other records and so on takes its time toll.

Post by Ralf Angeli
This would also fix the problem with the compiler message.

But to be honest: we have a history of problems, in particular with
XEmacs. The "we don't need to mention them, all will be fine with the
next release" mantra is not too convincing in the long run.

[Ralf Angeli]

Post by David Kastrup

Post by Ralf Angeli

Post by David Kastrup
Perhaps we should put a column "current issues" on our web page to
keep people up to scratch concerning known incompatibilities?

I'd rather release 11.55 soon.

How soon? We have not have much feedback yet.

Something between two and four weeks from now. This should be long
enough to get feedback about most of the potential obvious bugs.

Post by David Kastrup
Believe it or not, but going through the complete release process,
even when release notes and manuals and version numbers and stuff
have already been done by somebody else, rarely takes less than
several hours.

Answering questions about bugs already fixed in CVS takes time, too.

Post by David Kastrup

Post by Ralf Angeli
This would also fix the problem with the compiler message.

But to be honest: we have a history of problems, in particular with
XEmacs.

With XEmacs we currently have a particularly bad situation. 11.53 is
no longer in pre-release but a regular package. This might lead to
more reports about the overlays-at bug. 11.54 is in pre-release and
Uwe doesn't like to apply patches.

Post by David Kastrup
The "we don't need to mention them, all will be fine with the
next release" mantra is not too convincing in the long run.

Yes, I am getting your point. I was thinking of using a bug tracker
which would not require us to maintain a list of bugs and remedies by
hand. But first, we don't have one which is controllable by email and
second, for the users it would be more convenient if these things are
presented in a structured way at a single place. This would be a
point for your suggestion for the web page. Of course this will only
work if there are only a few issues. And if we don't have workarounds
for those bugs we'd have to make a new release anyway.

By the way, do we have a workaround for the compiler message? If it
happens with pre-compiled Elisp files only, maybe recompiling the
source files will help. Could somebody seeing the compiler message
check this? If the compiler is quiet then, we could mention this as a
workaround.

Anyway, if I find the time I'll probably follow your suggestion to put
current issues on the web page just to get some traffic off our
communication channels. But that doesn't invalidate the time frame
for a bug-fix release I mentioned above.

[Brett Presnell]

I hesitate to mention this, but I just noticed that the version of
emacspeak carried by Ubuntu Warty is also 17.0. This is less of a
problem with Ubuntu because emacspeak is definitely not installed by
default, and it may not be a problem at all, depending on how emacs
load path is configured by the package.

Judging from http://higgs.djpig.de/ubuntu/www/hoary/allpackages it
looks like even Hoary (Ubuntu release due in March) is using version
17.0 of emacspeak, and in fact, so is the current Debian unstable on
which Ubuntu is based. Why such an old version I wonder?

I'm going to contact the Debian package maintainers for auctex and
emacspeak offline, just to be sure that they are aware of the
auctex/emacspeak/regexp-opt issue. I'll cc David to make sure that he
is in the loop.
--
Brett Presnell
Department of Statistics
University of Florida
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~presnell/

"We don't think that the popularity of an error makes it the truth."
-- Richard Stallman

() ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
/\ - against microsoft attachments

[Reiner Steib]

Post by David Kastrup
I have uploaded new RPMs that list emacspeak < 18 as a conflicting
package. [...]
It is up to Reiner whether he wants to build a SuSE RPM just for this
silliness: after all, there are no reported problems whatsoever up to
now.

As SuSE doesn't provide an emacspeak package, I don't think it is
worth doing.

Bye, Reiner.

[Frank Küster]

Post by Reiner Steib

Post by David Kastrup
I have uploaded new RPMs that list emacspeak < 18 as a conflicting
package. [...]
It is up to Reiner whether he wants to build a SuSE RPM just for this
silliness: after all, there are no reported problems whatsoever up to
now.

As SuSE doesn't provide an emacspeak package, I don't think it is
worth doing.

I have filed an RC bug against the emacspeak package in Debian - the Cc
to this list didn't get through yet, it seems.

http://bugs.debian.org/291970

Let's see whether the maintainer wakes up...

Regards, Frank