Re: A better autogen.sh

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

On 03/16/2011 03:12 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Whenever maintainers feel it necessary, they could autogenerate a
>> >  new version, copy it into the msdos/ subdirectory by hand, and
>> >  commit the result.  That should be enough to address concerns
>> >  about the MS-DOS port.
> It will be enough if someone takes upon themselves to perform this
> duty as a matter of routine.  Are you volunteering for the job?

If nobody else does it, I can do it; but it sounds like Joakim
and Glenn volunteered first.  Whoever does it, that should be enough
to address this problem.

> I could understand an argument that supporting Unix-like platforms is
> easier.  (And even the "easier" argument is IMO minor, looking at all
> the stuff in lib/ that is needed to support those Unix-like non-GNU
> platforms.)

But that's exactly the point.  We cannot avoid the need to
have porting support.  But we can separate porting concerns
from mainline development concerns.  The stuff in lib/ is separate,
and people who aren't worried about porting to non-GNU platforms
don't need to worry about lib/.  The Microsoft ports should be
more like that: they should be separated from the mainline code,
and kept in their own msdos/ and nt/ subdirectories, and ordinary
Emacs development should not have to worry about them.

Of course this is just a goal and practical compromises must be
made in some cases.  Currently, though, there are too many instances
of material in the mainstream repository areas only because of Microsoft,
these instances make it harder to do mainstream development,
and we should therefore encourage attempts to move this material
into msdos/ and nt/.