[net.emacs] Precautions for porting

rms@prep.ai.mit.edu (02/05/86)

From: rms@prep.ai.mit.edu (Richard M. Stallman)
I would expect it to be the most basic common sense that before
starting to put work into changing a program one would make sure to
get the latest version, in order to avoid wasting time on problems
already fixed.  But time after time someone starts to work on GNU
Emacs omitting this precaution.  Therefore:

Anyone who is trying to port Emacs version 16 should give up.

Not only is that version obsolete, but many of the changes made since
then were made specifically to remove machine dependencies and make
Emacs run on more kinds of systems.  Stop repeating this work and
get Emacs 17.46.

For the Gould in particular, the main hurdle was eliminated in 17.45.