From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Phillip Lord Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Could we include diff and grep (etc.) executables on Windows? Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2019 15:48:48 +0000 Message-ID: <87y2wd6v8f.fsf@russet.org.uk> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="133633"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Mathias Dahl Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Nov 18 16:49:13 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1iWjH7-000YbO-2V for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 18 Nov 2019 16:49:13 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:36086 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1iWjH5-0001R7-96 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 18 Nov 2019 10:49:11 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:40960) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1iWjGm-0001Qy-M8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Nov 2019 10:48:54 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1iWjGl-0007bB-Cy for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Nov 2019 10:48:52 -0500 Original-Received: from cloud103.planethippo.com ([78.129.138.110]:56324) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1iWjGk-0007aa-Ux for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Nov 2019 10:48:51 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=russet.org.uk; s=default; h=Content-Type:MIME-Version:Message-ID: In-Reply-To:Date:References:Subject:Cc:To:From:Sender:Reply-To: Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-ID:Content-Description:Resent-Date: Resent-From:Resent-Sender:Resent-To:Resent-Cc:Resent-Message-ID:List-Id: List-Help:List-Unsubscribe:List-Subscribe:List-Post:List-Owner:List-Archive; bh=4nDHTgbG+PyFuuQUdA3OhycNebItTn8iFCEZPnsRp9U=; b=0LVMOhOXzJVshI2o1zsDc6Nq8 Wt2sCW4F9vZyWxa1w17wzB0/WYjtLzqmKLCoTTcmqDaHdbg5yKEjtN7aZDsSiyiFMcUDVcEGq9exQ pnqbUvgM2m5N7dDyRK0XUhY+DFo11S3S3OwawhaQYhX8Hx3PG7Pd0LLKpZt9Agqyyn7kZ6cz/+iY0 GkaVfolkeqDDlcRTeOk1b4yK+4HAncdi7Pgr0Tdu+jOElXTVbCqkUvCSdeWNvnzVYIB1g5Vijo9/1 +cu4GEyescI+nSzJY620SBDPoXZd/kcI74JfHEenFCnuaBfGFuy+QxpQNWC0KvzMYypSUPsKzKn69 acAbwHc2A==; Original-Received: from janus-nat-128-240-225-57.ncl.ac.uk ([128.240.225.57]:59834 helo=russet.org.uk) by cloud103.planethippo.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1iWjGj-00EAJZ-4I; Mon, 18 Nov 2019 15:48:49 +0000 In-Reply-To: (Mathias Dahl's message of "Sun, 17 Nov 2019 12:50:19 +0100") X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - cloud103.planethippo.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - gnu.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - russet.org.uk X-Get-Message-Sender-Via: cloud103.planethippo.com: authenticated_id: phillip.lord@russet.org.uk X-Authenticated-Sender: cloud103.planethippo.com: phillip.lord@russet.org.uk X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 78.129.138.110 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:242375 Archived-At: Mathias Dahl writes: > I sometimes help friends at work trying out Emacs. We're mostly on Windows > and one thing that makes things harder is that some of the useful features > of Emacs uses external tools. I'm thinking specifically about small > utilities like diff, grep, etc. So, on Windows, useful features like Ediff > and the different grep-based tools do not work out of the box. > > I see that we bundle some exe files in the bin directory of Emacs (bunzip2, > bzcat, etc.), could we include some of the other core utilities as well? > > Of course, if you commit to use Emacs you can make sure to install these > tools in one of several ways it can be done today (Cygwin. MSYS, natively > compiled, etc.) but users could be up and running much faster if they did > not have to do this. If you are trying out Emacs and compare it with other > editors today, where some of this are also built in but work without these > external tools, you might give up. > > Any comments and opinions on this? Does anything stop us from bundling a > few more useful utilities to make Emacs even more useful by default? I > think it should benefit many users. > > Thanks! > > /Mathias > > PS. Of course, Emacs has support for many external tools, and one might > ask: where do we stop? But, I think the core features, mentioned above, are > good candidates to include by default. I think, a priori, there would be no particular problem with doing this, in terms of the packaging and bundling. But there would be a problem in terms of curating the list of things we added. In addition, there is the difficulty that the size of the Emacs download will go up; so, in fact, between Emacs-26 and -27 the number of external packages has dropped (so, for example, python was in Emacs-26, but is not in Emacs-27). I made this change because of complaints about size. Still, the build scripts that I have written could be modified to support adding additional binaries relatively easily. So, it would be straight-forward to add diff and grep and see what difference it makes. Other things on my list would be gunzip and aspell. But I'd really need a good set of critera for making a decision. I did think about just greping source for "executable-find", but that fails as soon as you hit interpreters (python, perl and latex for example). I could say "called by emacs and relatively small for some value of small". Phil