Re: Emacs 23.4 Updated Windows Binaries published

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:34:22 +0100
> From: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>
> 
> Christoph Scholtes wrote:
> 
> > The binaries were built using the following libraries:
> > giflib-4.1.4-1
> > jpeg-6b-4
> > libXpm-3.5.8
> > libpng-1.4.3-1
> > tiff-3.8.2-1
> > zlib-1.2.5-2
> 
> Does an user need those libraries at run-time?

No, Emacs will run even without them.  But some features, like support
for displaying the corresponding image types, will not be available.

> If "yes", why their 
> binaries aren't in the emacs tar-ball? Only libXpm.dll is found... :-(

libxpm is required for displaying the color icons on the tool-bar
buttons, that's why it is stored near the binary distribution.

> At least, why not adding a link to those binaries?

The links are in the README.W32 file.

> The best solution, in any case, would be to ship all the needed binaries 
> from which Emacs binaries depend on... :-)  ...at least as separate 
> package (== tar-ball)... :)

That means unnecessary complications for the volunteers who produce
the binaries, see the recent threads here (about GnuTLS, but not only
about it).  For starters, we need to provide sources as well, and that
might be tricky legal-wise.