Re: msys2 build path problems + copy-paste english results in chinese characters

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es>
>> Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2021 16:40:43 +0100
>> 
>> >> If you know a better approach
>> >
>> > Yes, change PATH outside of Emacs.  Then live happily ever after.
>> 
>> That's precisely what I prefer to avoid.
>
> There's no need to avoid it.
>
>> > One failure is that you put directories with forward slashes into the
>> > environment of the programs you invoke, and not all of them like that
>> > (although most do cope with that).
>> 
>> Maybe if an application parses PATH on a broken way. So far I found
>> none.
>
> I've definitely seen a few in the past.
>
>> > Another problem is that after this, PATH used by Emacs and PATH used
>> > by sub-processes is different.
>> 
>> I don't know how this could be a problem, even less when emacs.exe lives
>> in the directory added to PATH.
>
> It could be a problem because sub-processes will be able to find
> programs that Emacs might not find.
>
>> > Yet another problem, specific to invoking MSYS2 commands, is that the
>> > directory might be incorrectly encoded (if it includes non-ASCII
>> > characters), since MSYS2 programs expect UTF-8 encoding AFAIK, whereas
>> > Emacs encodes it using the system codepage.
>> 
>> Well, adding directories containing MSYS2/Cygwin applications to PATH is
>> risky, something to avoid. Fortunately, on a MSYS2 setup MSYS2 and
>> mingw-w64 binaries are strictly separated.

Not just strictly separated but they don't seem to like to be mixed. Now
coreutils get installed into "msys" (/usr/bin) while GCC gets installed into
mingw64 (/mingw64/bin). So if I wish emacs to find gcc, as & co, and not run it
from the command line, I have to add mingw64/bin to my OS path. If I also wish
Emacs to find gnu ls, I have to add /usr/bin to OS path to, but they are not
recommended to mix, and you also don't recommend setting path from within Emacs
either, so I am a little bit puzzled here what would is a good practice.

I have currently added mingw first, and msys after to the OS paths, so gcc & co
will find it's binaries first, how well it will work I will see.

And I also discovered I can't send mail, authentication failed, which is 
probably .authinfo file not being found or not being decrypted, which also used
to work before. I don't know yet if it is also related to paths or something
else; I am not into tweaking my system more today, so that will be another day.