On 6/26/2026 8:28 AM, Sean Whitton wrote:
Stefan Monnier via "Emacs development discussions." [25/Jun 11:13pm -04] wrote:
- After NN.1 is released, I expect much fewer people run the `emacs-NN`
branch, so any regression risks remaining undetected before the next
(minor) release. If the regression is detected earlier, it'll likely
be detected by someone running `master` and there's a chance that the
fix will make it only to `master` if we don't notice the link to the
previous bug-fix or don't notice that that previous bug-fix was
installed in `emacs-NN`.
Thanks. I find this to be a persuasive reason not to try to make more
point releases.
I'll work on a patch to our notes in admin/ for the middle ground policy
where we always expect to make a .2 that has lots of fixes (and so
people should continue installing fixes there instead of master until
the release of .2), but thereafter it's critical bug fixes only.
I think some of this aligns thanks to timing. Recently, major Emacs
releases have taken roughly 1-1.5 years since the last major release,
and minor (.2) releases have taken roughly 6 months since the previous
(.1) release. By the time maintainers would otherwise be prepping a .3
release, we'd be close to creating a new release branch for the next
release.
Since multiple factors point towards this release strategy, it seems
like a good one to settle on. Writing down these guidelines in admin/
makes sense to me.
