From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Correct Paths to Emacs C Sources after Installation Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:41:46 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <834mugvw5w.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1415123126 19374 80.91.229.3 (4 Nov 2014 17:45:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2014 17:45:26 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Nov 04 18:45:19 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XliAQ-0005wG-8B for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 Nov 2014 18:45:18 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42109 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XliAP-0001rh-Sw for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:45:17 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.kjsl.com!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news2.arglkargh.de!newsfeed.fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 48 Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="fcb29b9bd97cbbdbaebe52c7926d07da"; logging-data="21388"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+TZ0eegOU/hn7zJf8+XKle" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:iuR2BrweTVOV/8iTNazs0zU3gbM= sha1:oVSdg9QiIBl3IEXhsI525243iF0= Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:208466 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:100741 Archived-At: > I happen to disagree, I'd say 99% of Emacs users have no clue how to build > it. Many (probably most?) Linux distributions serve prebuilt packages. > MSYS2 on Windows serve prebuilt packages through pacman (package manager > ported from Arch Linux) as well. Cygwin serves prebuilt packages. I provide > standalone Emacs builds for Windows too. Furthermore, Eli told me recently > that sources should be included (either separately or in the same archive) > anyway to be compliant with the license. The only relevant comparison is "built locally" with "the user installed a precompiled package and then fetched the sources". So users who don't have the source are not relevant. >> Can you give "typical examples" where (expand-file-name "../src/emacs" >> invocation-directory) will give the right result? > Would you agree that this is *at least* more reasonable default in many > cases than hard coding nonexistent directory? *If* the current value points to an non-existing directory and if ../src/emacs points to an existing directory, then yes, it's probably a better default. The question is whether it'd happen often enough to justify the corresponding code. > Last but not least, in many package managers there are options to install > sources separately from binaries and by convention they are usually > installed under corresponding "src/" suffix. This again > proves that my proposed default is more reasonable than a hard coded path > to some random directory. I'm not debating whether it's reasonable or not. I never said it was not reasonable. I just would like to see some concrete examples where "../src/emacs" would work. I do think it's important to make it easier to jump to the sources (which is why I wrote the code that adds the "C source" button). Another approach is to leave the default value of source-directory alone and instead change the behavior of the "C source" button so that (if source-directory doesn't exist) it tries a bunch of alternative directories. Yet another option is to offer to actually download the code (or visit it straight from the Git repository via the URL package). Prebuilt packages (such as Debian's) could tweak the code to offer to install the corresponding source package. Stefan PS: Side note: the right way to propose such a change is to submit it via M-x report-emacs-bug.