Re: Emacs 24.3 windows binaries are available

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:25:40 +0100
> From: Miguel Ruiz <rbenit68@gmail.com>
> 
> So, for future reference to the list, please, could you specify:
> 
> 1) - Preferred compiler version?

There are no clear preferences regarding this one, although the latest
stable MinGW release (4.7.2 as of this writing, AFAIK) is better,
because newer GCCs generally produce better debug info, so make it
easier to investigate problems and crashes.

> 2) - With/without libxml2 included? AFAIK  In Emacs 24.2 official windows
> binaries, libxml2 was left out. (
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-09/msg00304.html )

It is best to include support for every optional library supported on
Windows.  The only exception is librsvg whose support is still
experimental (see nt/INSTALL).  If the Emacs binaries supports a
library, the end user still has the option of deciding whether or not
to download and install the library itself.  By contrast, if some
library is not supported by emacs.exe, users have no options but avoid
using the features which require that library.

> 3) - Should every dependent library be recompiled with the chosen version
> of the compiler, or left as is distributed?

If you recompile the libraries, you will need to provide their
binaries in the bundle.  While this is acceptable (and perhaps even
convenient for people who want a single "sumo" package), it will
require that you also provide the source tarballs of every library on
the same site where you provide the binaries, to be compatible with
GPL.

Therefore, it might be better to use the libraries from the sites we
advertise in nt/INSTALL and README.W32, because those sites already
provide the sources and their binaries were already successfully
tested with Emacs.

> 4) - Different configure options?

For the released versions -- none, except those you need to point the
compiler to the headers of the optional libraries.  (If you install
all the headers under the system-wide include directory, the list of
such options will be empty or almost empty.  But for some reason,
people tend to install each optional library in its own directory, in
which case you will need at least one "--cflags -I..." pair for each
library.  I recommend -- and do it myself -- putting all the headers
under the same include directory, but YMMV.)

For the pretest versions and development snapshots, add the following
switches to the configure invocation, besides what is needed for the
optional libraries:

    --no-opt --enable-checking

> I have no problems in making another build with the official specifications.

Thanks.  What worried me was that your original binary seemed to have
problems with libxml2 and libgnutls which we recommend, so if there
are any problems, let's investigate and fix them.