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(gnus)Gnus Development

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Gnus Development
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   Gnus is developed in a two-phased cycle.  The first phase involves
much discussion on the `ding@gnus.org' mailing list, where people
propose changes and new features, post patches and new back ends.  This
phase is called the "alpha" phase, since the Gnusae released in this
phase are "alpha releases", or (perhaps more commonly in other circles)
"snapshots".  During this phase, Gnus is assumed to be unstable and
should not be used by casual users.  Gnus alpha releases have names
like "Red Gnus" and "Quassia Gnus".

   After futzing around for 50-100 alpha releases, Gnus is declared
"frozen", and only bug fixes are applied.  Gnus loses the prefix, and
is called things like "Gnus 5.6.32" instead.  Normal people are
supposed to be able to use these, and these are mostly discussed on the
`gnu.emacs.gnus' newsgroup.

   Some variable defaults differ between alpha Gnusae and released
Gnusae.  In particular, `mail-source-delete-incoming' defaults to `nil'
in alpha Gnusae and `t' in released Gnusae.  This is to prevent lossage
of mail if an alpha release hiccups while handling the mail.

   The division of discussion between the ding mailing list and the Gnus
newsgroup is not purely based on publicity concerns.  It's true that
having people write about the horrible things that an alpha Gnus release
can do (sometimes) in a public forum may scare people off, but more
importantly, talking about new experimental features that have been
introduced may confuse casual users.  New features are frequently
introduced, fiddled with, and judged to be found wanting, and then
either discarded or totally rewritten.  People reading the mailing list
usually keep up with these rapid changes, while people on the newsgroup
can't be assumed to do so.