Where's the explanation of the file names under /gnu/emacs/windows?

Where's the explanation of the file names under /gnu/emacs/windows?

[Drew Adams]

How is a user who wants to download an Emacs
binary for MS Windows supposed to know what
the various downloadable files are, based on
their file names?  It's not at all obvious to
me what the names are meant to stand for.

In that windows/ directory there's a README
file. It says nothing about this.

In windows/emacs-28 there are 8 different
files to download, not counting 8 .sig files.

We show the modified dates and the sizes,
but the Description field is empty.  No clue
as to what each file is.

Can users please get some description of
the files?  I'd suggest a Windows README in
directory windows/emacs-28 itself, which
would cover this.

I'd also suggest a better description of the
filenames on the GNU Emacs website.  E.g.,
for MS Windows, here:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#nonfree

The text there tells you about the file
emacs-version-installer.exe, which is OK.
But for the rest there's nothing, except for
emacs-version.zip.  There's nothing about
any of these files:

emacs-28-deps-mingw-w64-src.zip
emacs-28-deps.zip
emacs-28.1-DEBUG-installer.exe
emacs-28.1-DEBUG-no-deps.zip
emacs-28.1-DEBUG.zip
emacs-28.1-no-deps.zip
emacs-28.1.zip.sig

(And is the first of these the only one
that's for 64-bit Windows?)

Re: Where's the explanation of the file names under /gnu/emacs/windows?

[Phil Sainty]

 From cursory examination only (I don't use Windows)...

I note that http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/README says:

"Each major version of Emacs is kept in its own subdirectory. Please
see the README files there for details of how to install and run
Emacs."

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-28/ seems to be missing
the equivalent of this file to explain the contents of the directory:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-27/README-windows-binaries

But earlier releases had a README file with additional information:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-26/README

so perhaps we're missing both README and README-windows-binaries in
the emacs-28 directory, and missing emacs-27/README too?

(IIUC the old README was a combination of the README-windows-binaries
information and some additional info.)


-Phil

RE: [External] : Re: Where's the explanation of the file names under /gnu/emacs/windows?

[Drew Adams]

> From cursory examination only (I don't use Windows)...
> I note that
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/README
> __;!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!Kea7Ycu449oSMh11LAOHNnCjt5Uwsx-
> V7wfSPK6LCmV9RUt7Yha3rDywkPVi-aqpzLmYZVhktfwpXpXO7bc$  says:
> 
> "Each major version of Emacs is kept in its own subdirectory. Please
> see the README files there for details of how to install and run
> Emacs."
> 
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-
> 28/__;!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!Kea7Ycu449oSMh11LAOHNnCjt5Uwsx-
> V7wfSPK6LCmV9RUt7Yha3rDywkPVi-aqpzLmYZVhktfwpEhTxI3U$  seems to be
> missing
> the equivalent of this file to explain the contents of the directory:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-
> 27/README-windows-
> binaries__;!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!Kea7Ycu449oSMh11LAOHNnCjt5Uwsx-
> V7wfSPK6LCmV9RUt7Yha3rDywkPVi-aqpzLmYZVhktfwp_NKuN24$
> 
> But earlier releases had a README file with additional information:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-
> 26/README__;!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!Kea7Ycu449oSMh11LAOHNnCjt5Uwsx-
> V7wfSPK6LCmV9RUt7Yha3rDywkPVi-aqpzLmYZVhktfwpFp2pejw$
> 
> so perhaps we're missing both README and README-windows-binaries in
> the emacs-28 directory, and missing emacs-27/README too?
> 
> (IIUC the old README was a combination of the README-windows-binaries
> information and some additional info.)

Yes, thanks.  I thought I recollected the
same thing.  Without such description, we
now get just a list of file names.