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

[Richard M. Heiberger]

well, when I was primarily on windows, I never built.  I never saw the
need.  On Macintosh, ESS doesn't
work unless I build, so I build.  I still don't see the functional
point of building (except that it doesn't work otherwise.)
Martin, can you tell me why building is helpful.

Rich

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Vitalie Spinu <spinuvit at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >>> 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
>
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