[ESS-bugs] ESS 13.09-1 with old R versions fails pretty badly

[Vitalie Spinu]

 >>> Martin Maechler on Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:57:59 +0100 wrote:

[...]


 >> This will not work for those who don't build. 

 MM> That's no problem. All of us (ESS core) can build.  People working
 MM> from svn or git *must* build ...

A couple of short notes:

 1) I don't build because I tend to restart emacs after every feature I
 add/change. Sometimes it takes dozens of restarts an hour. So waiting
 for our 30 seconds make is not an option for me. Sorry.

 2) Some people (especially on Windows) might need to test/use ESS from
 source. Requiring all the make/latex stuff on Windows is an
 overkill. We will scary people away even more than we do now. We don't
 want that.

 We really need and easy install. We are in acute need of new
 users/testers and new lisp developers.

 3) Recall that even Dirk doesn't use make for his build. 


 >> It will also not work with MELPA. I will fix that by parsing the
 >> ESSR/DESCRIPTION directly.

 MM> Do we really care for MELPA for *UN*released versions of ESS ?? 

I think rolling releases are better for small projects. That means more
testers, quicker bug fixes and, most importantly, fixes get to end users
really quickly (MELPA is updated every hour).

My personal belief is that, eventually, MELPA should become the *only*
official source of ESS. No debian package, no Vincent's bundle. This is
how modern emacs works, and it is the fastest and easiest route for the
users. We should adapt IMO. Resistance is futile :-)

 MM> start from. The others (even if they are more than 0.05% must build,
 MM> yes, that's true for all free software I've known.

Well, emacs packages need not be build in order to work and people are
used to this simple scheme. Let's try not to introduce additional sticks
in the wheels, we already have enough of them.

  Vitalie