zip files of Windows builds of emacs

zip files of Windows builds of emacs

[Matthew M. Boedicker]

It would be convenient if the Windows builds of emacs were distributed
(on the FTP site) as zip files instead of tar.gz's. Windows does not
include anything that can unpack tar.gz's by default, but it does include
an unzipping utility.

Thanks,
Matthew M. Boedicker

Re: zip files of Windows builds of emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:49:41 -0500
> From: "Matthew M. Boedicker" <mboedick@mboedick.org>
> 
> It would be convenient if the Windows builds of emacs were distributed
> (on the FTP site) as zip files instead of tar.gz's.

The GNU FTP site has a program, called djtarnt.exe, that you can
download and use for that.  The file README should explain that.

> Windows does not include anything that can unpack tar.gz's by
> default, but it does include an unzipping utility.

Not really true, as many Windows installations have WinZip, which
supports .tar.gz archives.

The problem with producing a .zip archive is that there's (AFAIK) no
zip utility that is Free Software in the sense the GNU project uses
that term.  So the FSF doesn't want to produce a .zip archive so as
not to promote non-Free software.  Alternative measures, such as
having djtarnt.exe on the FTP site, are supposed to help in solving
this conundrum.