RE: windows installer

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > I, for one, am not interested in "installing" any Emacs build
> > (Program Files etc.).  I use multiple builds from different
> > releases.  I don't even want anything added, by default, to
> > PATH.
> 
> Then you should be fine with just unzipping a zip file, because by
> default the Windows explorer does that into a separate directory.

Yes, I am fine with the delivered binaries.  I thought that
was clear, but thanks for making it explicit.

Such binaries used to be delivered more often.  If there
were a simple "push-button" command to create them locally,
which didn't require anything else, I might well take
advantage of that too.

> But this installer is not for people like you or me who know what they
> are doing and have special needs and requirements.

OK.  (But I do not know what I am doing wrt building Emacs
on Windows - I don't do that.)

My only "special needs and requirements" is the
ability to put the equivalent of what the delivered
Windows zip for a binary provides in any folder.

> It is primarily for the naïve (a.k.a. "newbie") who just want to be
> able to invoke the installer and get Emacs installed "correctly",
> meaning that Emacs is available to any other program running on the
> system.  And that means being installed where other programs are
> installed (which gives them additional protection by system-wide
> processes and features), and being on PATH.

That's fine.  But is it not the case that this "installer"
also _builds_ Emacs for Windows?  If not then apologies
for misunderstanding.  But if yes, couldn't that part
of what it provides be easily decoupled from the rest
of the "installing"?

If so, wouldn't that be a good thing?  Folks who don't
want to hassle with obtaining and installing whatever
tooling is necessary to build Emacs could build it
easily and so might follow Emacs development more
closely, potentially providing more timely feedback.

Just a thought.  As it is now, I wait until there is
a pretest or release before seeing what has changed
and reporting problems or offering suggestions.

I'm not saying that Emacs needs to do this.  I'm
asking whether (1) the build part is already being
done, as part of this "Windows intaller" and (2) if
so, whether it wouldn't make sense to offer the
build-only (not "install") part as an option.  IOW,
be able to produce the equivalent of the Windows
binaries that are uploaded for, say, a pretest.