Merge from mainline.

2 files changed, 18 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/admin/notes/bzr b/admin/notes/bzr
index 5600c9badb0..f4907063d0b 100644
--- a/admin/notes/bzr
+++ b/admin/notes/bzr
@@ -12,10 +12,17 @@ difficult.
 
 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-03/msg01124.html
 
+The exception is, if you know that the change will be difficult to
+merge to the trunk (eg because the trunk code has changed a lot).
+In that case, it's helpful if you can apply the change to both trunk
+and branch yourself (when committing the branch change, indicate
+in the commit log that it should not be merged to the trunk; see below).
+
 * Backporting a bug-fix from the trunk to a branch (e.g. "emacs-23").
-Label the commit as a backport, e.g. by starting the commit message with
-"Backport:".  This is helpful for the person merging the release branch
-to the trunk.
+Indicate in the commit log that there is no need to merge the commit
+to the trunk.  Anything that matches `bzrmerge-skip-regexp' will do;
+eg start the commit message with "Backport:".  This is helpful for the
+person merging the release branch to the trunk.
 
 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-05/msg00262.html
 
diff --git a/admin/notes/years b/admin/notes/years
index cdd7cbe4b5f..e6b38c5aefd 100644
--- a/admin/notes/years
+++ b/admin/notes/years
@@ -6,6 +6,14 @@ rolls around, add that year to every FSF (and AIST) copyright notice.
 There's no need to worry about whether an individual file has changed
 in a given year - it's sufficient that Emacs as a whole has changed.
 
+Therefore the years are updated en-masse near the start of each year,
+so basically there is no need for most people to do any updating of them.
+
+The current (in 2011) version of "Information for Maintainers of GNU
+Software" (see that document for more details) says that it is OK to use
+ranges in copyright years, so in early 2011 the years were changed to use
+ranges, which occupy less space and do not grow in length every year.
+
 For more detailed information on maintaining copyright, see the file
 "copyright" in this directory.