Supported platforms

Supported platforms

[Daniele Nicolodi]

Hello,

is there anywhere a list of the platforms (operating system and
architecture) supported by Emacs?  I found etc/MACHINES in the Emacs
sources, but it does not seem to contain an exhaustive list.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Dan

Re: Supported platforms

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net>
> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 14:42:32 -0600
> 
> is there anywhere a list of the platforms (operating system and
> architecture) supported by Emacs?

I don't think there are innate limitations.  Any platform that
supports running a Posix shell, GNU Make, a C99-compliant C compiler,
and a standard C library, will do.

Is there some specific question that you are interested in, or a
specific platform?  And also, what version of Emacs are we talking
about?  Versions before 27 could have problems in the dumping process.

> I found etc/MACHINES in the Emacs sources, but it does not seem to
> contain an exhaustive list.

etc/MACHINES was relevant when Emacs included a special header file
for every platform it supported.  That system was tossed long ago, so
I don't think an exhaustive list is possible anymore, although in
principle such a list could be composed for a given time instance.
Even if prepared, such a list will quickly become outdated, as new
systems are created and old go into oblivion.

Re: Supported platforms

[Daniele Nicolodi]

On 15-06-2019 00:42, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net>
>> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 14:42:32 -0600
>>
>> is there anywhere a list of the platforms (operating system and
>> architecture) supported by Emacs?
> 
> I don't think there are innate limitations.  Any platform that
> supports running a Posix shell, GNU Make, a C99-compliant C compiler,
> and a standard C library, will do.

Where are you drawing the line to call those the only required
dependencies?  For example, Emacs uses autoconf for the build process,
thus I guess independently of the fact that autoconf support exists for
the given platform, also an m4 implementation is required.  Also, what
standard C library?

> Is there some specific question that you are interested in, or a
> specific platform?  And also, what version of Emacs are we talking
> about?  Versions before 27 could have problems in the dumping process.

It is a question mostly out of curiosity. But there have been talks
recently of working on improvements to the build process, and I am
trying to understand what systems Emacs is targeting, what systems the
build process needs to support, and on which systems Emacs is tested.

Cheers,
Dan

Re: Supported platforms

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net>
> Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2019 12:20:56 -0600
> 
> On 15-06-2019 00:42, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >> From: Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net>
> >> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 14:42:32 -0600
> >>
> >> is there anywhere a list of the platforms (operating system and
> >> architecture) supported by Emacs?
> > 
> > I don't think there are innate limitations.  Any platform that
> > supports running a Posix shell, GNU Make, a C99-compliant C compiler,
> > and a standard C library, will do.
> 
> Where are you drawing the line to call those the only required
> dependencies?  For example, Emacs uses autoconf for the build process,
> thus I guess independently of the fact that autoconf support exists for
> the given platform, also an m4 implementation is required.

Not AFAIK, not for building a release tarball.  For that, you only
need a Posix-compatible shell, capable of running a configure script.

So I think what I mentioned are indeed the only required dependencies.
You will need more only if you want to build from Git.

> Also, what standard C library?

A C99-compliant library will do, although we don't even assume that
100%.

> > Is there some specific question that you are interested in, or a
> > specific platform?  And also, what version of Emacs are we talking
> > about?  Versions before 27 could have problems in the dumping process.
> 
> It is a question mostly out of curiosity. But there have been talks
> recently of working on improvements to the build process, and I am
> trying to understand what systems Emacs is targeting, what systems the
> build process needs to support, and on which systems Emacs is tested.

Well, is your curiosity satisfied?