Re: [feature/internal-msys] thoughts of a more function windows package

[Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 22:13:07 +0000
>> 
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> >> > They mostly work, until they don't.  Like with Cygwin, there are
>> >> > subtle incompatibilities, mainly in file names and in communications
>> >> > with subprocesses and response to "signals".  Encoding defaults are
>> >> > also different.
>> >> 
>> >> That's true for the msys2 commands but not the mingw64 ones?
>> >
>> > Yes.  That's why I asked about msys-1.0.dll: the programs that depend
>> > on that aren't mingw64 (native) programs.
>> 
>> But, mingw64 does not have all the packages I need.
>
> Are we talking about you personally, or are we talking about Emacs
> users?

Emacs users in general. I don't use Emacs for Windows myself, at least
not in any routine way.


> If the former, then MinGW64 are not the only source of good ports of
> Free Software to Windows, far from that.  If they don't have some
> package, you just go out and look for it elsewhere.

I am sure that this is true. But I have to scrape together tools from
several different locations, particularly if I have to host it (and thus
have the responsibilty of getting all the source), it's not going to
happen.

I might be able to use a different package manager (like chocolaty); I'd
rather use msys2 because I already use it for my build machine.

> If we are talking about Emacs users who will download Emacs from the
> GNU sites, then I'd say give them only what MinGW64 provides, so that
> they could use pacman to easily update that.  Those who need more will
> have to find and install whatever they need on their own.  Telling
> them to install MSYS ports instead risks exposing them to subtle
> problems, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Okay. In which case I'll only add the mingw64 to the path. This excludes
git which was one of my main aims to be honest. But at least we can add
a spell checker to Emacs.



>
>> How do people use Emacs on windows? I mean, do they install find, ls,
>> git, aspell and all the rest by hand?
>
> If MinGW doesn't provide those, what else can you do?  Me, I ported
> some of the packages myself (where I found no ports that were good
> enough or new for me), and installed others where I found good ports.
> Almost all of my ports are available from the ezwinports site.

Give up on these tools till a better solution appears.


>> >> Would it be easier to have Emacs allow me to successfully update PATH
>> >> during run?
>> >
>> > Update how?
>> 
>> Using some magic that doesn't exist at the current time. I mean a way
>> like did (by fiddling with setenv) that doesn't suffer the problems that
>> it causes.
>
> I don't think this magic can exist.  But if someone knows, let them
> speak up.

I don't know what the problems are that it causes, but again, if it's
not simple and we cannot provide a 90/10 solution for changing path
within a running Emacs, then I will try something that doesn't need
this.

Phil