Re: A better autogen.sh

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

On 03/16/2011 11:54 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Anyone who makes changes to the build process or any files
> that are related to the build process _must_ worry about lib/, because
> without understanding how it works and how it affects the rest of the
> code it is very easy to break something,

Yes, there are practical reasons why mainstream developers need to
worry about lib/ on occasion, just as they need to worry about their C
compiler, their 'make' implementation, etc.  But the overall goal of
lib/ is to make the current platform behave like a GNU platform, so
that the rest of Emacs can be written as if it were running in a GNU
environment.  Obviously lib/ not a perfect GNU emulation, but it does
help simplify the rest of Emacs.

> without knowing that there are wrappers for system headers
> there, it is impossible to understand how certain parts of Emacs code
> work on any given platform.

Yes, but that's fine.  If one wants to *understand* how the porting
works, one obviously must look into lib/; and if one wants to port to
a non-POSIXy platform, it'll be helpful to understand lib/, at least
to some extent, as that can provide useful info on how to port to a
non-POSIXy platform.

But if one merely wants to develop Emacs proper, one can ignore lib/
(most of the time, anyway), and write mainstream code for the GNU
platform, and have it "just work" on other Unix-like platforms.  The
MS-DOS and MS-Windows code should be similar: as much as possible it
should be invisible to mainstream developers, and mainstream code
should "just work".

A simple guideline to encourage this separation of concerns is: if a
file is needed only because of MS-DOS, it should be under msdos/; and
similarly for MS-Windows and nt/.  This needn't be an ironclad rule,
but it's a good guideline to follow when possible, so that mainstream
developers are not distracted by the porting code.

> "Separated" does not mean "segregated" or "ostracized".  People who
> happen to use and build the Windows port are responsible for
> non-trivial contributions to Emacs development that are certainly no
> less than yours... They don't deserve this kind of attitude, under
> which it is okay to make their life miserable and every other day
> break the port they use

This appears to be reading more into my email than what's there (as
well as exaggerate a bit :-).  In no way has my email suggested the
pejorative connotations of "segregrated" or "ostricized", nor have I
suggested that it's OK to make anybody's life "miserable".  Let's
focus on the technical problems rather than personalizing the
discussion.