From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Sam Steingold Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Making gnulib imports build on Windows Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:43:47 -0500 Organization: disorganization Message-ID: References: <83vd1bwjig.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: sds@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1296146683 29628 80.91.229.12 (27 Jan 2011 16:44:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:44:43 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jan 27 17:44:39 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PiUxY-00048G-FF for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:44:38 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:42695 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PiUxM-00035A-6q for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:44:24 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=48849 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PiUx8-00034X-1I for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:44:14 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PiUwy-0004nN-UJ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:44:06 -0500 Original-Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:41319) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PiUwy-0004mP-JP for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:44:00 -0500 Original-Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PiUww-0003ms-To for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:43:58 +0100 Original-Received: from rrcs-24-103-48-205.nyc.biz.rr.com ([24.103.48.205]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:43:58 +0100 Original-Received: from sds by rrcs-24-103-48-205.nyc.biz.rr.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:43:58 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Mail-Followup-To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-Lines: 51 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: rrcs-24-103-48-205.nyc.biz.rr.com User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux) Mail-Copies-To: never X-Attribution: Sam X-Disclaimer: You should not expect anyone to agree with me. Cancel-Lock: sha1:4THGhDUGs/DJxe222ZBvIxwVDHE= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:135111 Archived-At: > * Eli Zaretskii [2011-01-26 21:29:59 +0200]: > > I don't like asking every end user to have Sed, especially since many > Windows ports of Sed are notoriously broken (I had to port it myself > to get a reliable tool). And since 3) sounds like wheel reinvention, > I tend to alternative 2). I think 1 is the best long-term approach. First of all, "windows culture" does not include building one's tools, so, IMO, most windows Emacs users use the pre-built executables, thus this change will affect only a few people. Second, cygwin has been around for quite some time and it stable enough for most purposes. I bet that most people who build Emacs on windows already have cygwin installed. Yes, Eli is one important exception, but I doubt that there are many (any?) others. And those who hate cygwin can get gnuwin32. Third, and most important: it is best to have one build system for all platforms instead of separate build systems for unixes and windows. I am talking from personal experience: GNU CLISP configures and builds with the exact same command line on all platforms (well, you have to add "--with-mingw" to configure on windows) and this has saved me a lot of maintenance time and effort. It is inevitable that more tools in addition to sed will seep into the Emacs build process (especially since Emacs now relies on gnulib); working around that will take Eli's time from real development into maintaining a byzantine structure. Yes, the price is installing gnuwin or cygwin. However, I claim this is not a big deal: checking out Emacs bzr tree consumes 0.5+G and cygwin/gnuwin take about that much each. Yes, the up-front cost is higher: discarding all the configure.bat gunk and switching to autoconf on windows will take more effort than simply distributing pre-generated getopt.h and whatnot. However, I claim that this cost will be paid eventually, sooner or later, and the later this is done, the more effort this will require. You cannot hold Emacs/windows build system with duct tape forever. I have made this suggestion in the past and I know that Eli does not like it. However, I am making it again here so that in a few years, when Eli inevitably sees the light and relents, I can say "I told you so" (provided I am still around :-). -- Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on CentOS release 5.3 (Final) http://pmw.org.il http://www.memritv.org http://thereligionofpeace.com http://palestinefacts.org http://camera.org http://truepeace.org The software said it requires Windows 3.1 or better, so I installed Linux.