Re: Mac OS X GNU Emacs Installer (make-package)

[Steven Tamm <steventamm@mac.com>]

>Hi Steven,
>
>Actually the idea (which hasn't been implemented) was to have `make
>install' install only one executable on the entire system: the one in
>the Emacs.app application bundle.  Then /usr/local/bin/emacs would be
>the shell script:
>
>#!/bin/sh
>/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$@"
>

Actually, I think this is a good idea, but in the reverse.  I would have the single copy of the executable in /usr/local/bin/emacs and have the Emacs executable be a link (either sym or hard).  The main reason is that it is likely to have the application move, but extremely unlikely that /usr/local/bin/emacs would move.

I have a patch that tests if -nw is not specified and we are not in an application bundle (i.e. in /usr/local/bin/emacs), then fork and execute /Applications/Emacs.app/...   This makes the behavior from the command line more desirable.  The downside (as David) is that it will be confusing for most Mac users.  Two or more emacs executables will be running at the same time with each appearing in the dock as a separate icon.  This behavior is better than the current one, and using Launch Services, we can find the location of the Emacs application without resorting to hard coding or using libexec.

The behavior I would like to have the command line appear to act more like emacsclient (or more appropriately the gnuclient from the NT port).  The gnuclient port will, by default, instantiate emacs if one does not exist, something you need to do set by hand with emacsclient.  It would also require that the server is started, which is questionable.

>I don't have a strong preference to implement package distribution one
>way or another.  But I was considering the different options one can
>specify for make-package, which will result in the quite a few
>differently-configured packages people can distribute.  I also think
>some of the options are not achievable by people building from source
>using `make', which is a little strange.  Imagine the amount of
>questions we'll be getting :-).

I think I'll add in some documentation detailing about what to do.  After all the discussions on version tracker, I think a "strong" admonition about not using --prefix=/usr should be included (since, at least on my system, /usr/bin/emacs has been destroyed by system updates twice).

>I've also remove mac/make-bin-dist and mac/osx-install, which are
>obsolete now.  Perhaps we should mention make-package in mac/INSTALL.

I'll add in an explanation of make-package today.

On another note, I'm probably going to put in an #ifdef in terminfo.c to remove the redefinition of UP, BC, & PC on darwin 6.2.  This will fix some linking warnings.  This test should probably should be placed in configure.in.  Something like this:

AC_MSG_CHECKING(whether termcap global variables are defined externally)
AC_TRY_LINK([extern char *UP;],[*UP=0],[termcap_global_vars_extern=yes],[termcap_global_vars_extern=no])


-Steven