RE: Support for MS-Windows build of Emacs (was: Warnings during building the current master on Win10 with MSYS2/MinGW64)

[Tom Davey <tom@tomdavey.com>]

Eli Zaretskii writes: 

> This is not an April 1 joke: if there's a significant community interested in being able 
> to run and develop Emacs on MS-Windows, someone should volunteer to take care 
> of the build on a day to day basis, or else the conclusion is that there's no general 
> interest in that platform among the Emacs community that is high enough to justify 
> the investment.

More than one billion end-user computer systems run some version of Microsoft Windows. Emacs users on Windows usually have no say in their choice of an OS; the rules are set by their employers. 

Appendix H of the Emacs Info Manual expresses this sentiment -- "We support GNU Emacs on proprietary operating systems because we hope this taste of freedom will inspire users to escape from them." -- but this is not how corporate IT departments see the situation. Considerations of security, centralized management, and end-user support make Windows a hard requirement for tens of millions of desktops that could benefit from Emacs. 

Abandoning the behemoth that is Windows strikes me as self-defeating for Emacs. Nobody will get a "taste of freedom" if Emacs fails to provide it to Windows users in the first place.

I do not work as a computer programmer; my technical skills are infinitesimal compared to the people on this list. Emacs, for me, is a very powerful business tool for managing projects and tasks (via Org-mode) and an equally powerful tool for writing prose. I see it becoming my preferred client for generative AI as well. 

I support the Org-mode developers via an annual donation to Librepay. I would happily do the same to keep the Windows builds of Emacs on par with other OSes.

On my two computers, desktop and laptop, evaluating emacs-version() currently returns "GNU Emacs 29.3 (build 2, x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2024-03-24". My heartfelt thanks to those who made and continue to make this possible. 

Eli, thank you for issuing the warning.

--
Tom Davey
tom@tomdavey.com
New York NY USA

-----Original Message-----
From: emacs-devel-bounces+tom=tomdavey.com@gnu.org <emacs-devel-bounces+tom=tomdavey.com@gnu.org> On Behalf Of Eli Zaretskii
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2024 1:53 AM
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Cc: Arash Esbati <arash@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Support for MS-Windows build of Emacs (was: Warnings during building the current master on Win10 with MSYS2/MinGW64)

> From: Arash Esbati <arash@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2024 22:16:12 +0200
> 
> after a long time, I built Emacs (baf9f1210a) from master on my Win10 
> box and it occurred to me that I get more warnings than I used to.  
> This is with
> 
> $ gcc --version
> gcc.exe (Rev3, Built by MSYS2 project) 14.1.0

Sadly, the MS-Windows port of Emacs is basically not taken care of anymore.  There are no active developers on board who seem to care about it, except yours truly.  I see this in the (lack of) responses to Windows-specific bugs and issues reported to the bug tracker: no one chimes in, even if I deliberately leave a bug report without responses for many days.  As my free time is severely limited, I only care about aspects that affect me directly (and the 64-bit build and GCC 14 are way outside that scope).

If no one comes forward and starts taking care of the MS-Windows issues, I'm very close to the decision of declaring the Windows build of Emacs "unsupported", meaning anyone who needs it are "on their own", from my POV as the (co)maintainer.

This is not an April 1 joke: if there's a significant community interested in being able to run and develop Emacs on MS-Windows, someone should volunteer to take care of the build on a day to day basis, or else the conclusion is that there's no general interest in that platform among the Emacs community that is high enough to justify the investment.

You _have_ been warned!