Re: [h-e-w] bug#10612: GnuTLS bundled with the windows Emacs binaries

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
> Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:59:53 -0600
> 
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:39:36 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote: 
> 
> EZ> How can anyone trust a build done by a bot for a port to a platform
> EZ> that is hardly if at all supported by the mainstream developers?  And
> EZ> a build of critical software such as GnuTLS at that?  What if it fails
> EZ> one of the tests in the test suite?
> 
> Someone has to do the work.  I offered to do it, setting up a BuildBot
> so I don't have to do it manually every time.

The build itself is not where most of the efforts need to be invested.
It's the careful examination of any compiler and linker warnings and
test suite results that takes most of the time.  That, and the need to
refresh the packages that are prerequisites (at least 4 are required),
each one of which has its own share of quirks and problems.

> I will obviously make it run the tests and if it fails, it will not
> deliver the DLLs.

Then I think you will never deliver.  E.g., my perfectly good build
failed 3 times in the test suite, due to problems in the test suite
itself.  I would expect at least one test to fail with each new
release.

> Do you have a better proposal (e.g. you want to be in charge of the
> builds or you know volunteers who want to do it)?

I don't know what it means to be "in charge".  I did the port of
3.0.9, and I can refresh it from time to time, as my time permits.  I
cannot make any promises, and I certainly cannot produce a fresh port
every 2 weeks.  If some grave problem gets detected in the last port,
and someone reports that a new version fixes that, I could try doing a
quick port of that.  If that's good enough, this part is covered; if
not, someone else will have to do it.

> I'm certainly not looking for more work for myself, but it seems no
> one else wants to automate this.

As I said, automation is not the issue (how hard is it to type the 3
commands, including "make install-strip", needed to produce a new set
of binaries?).  But feel free to set it up, maybe I'm wrong and the
problem is not as complicated as I think it is.

> The fact that the GnuTLS developers don't support W32 well is partly due
> to the lack of binary builds for that platform.  I think things will
> improve as up-to-date DLLs become available.

Well, they are available now, but I see no change, at least not
judging by the traffic on the mailing list.