Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Vardhamann B E]

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Hello devs,

I have had the pleasure of using Emacs on macOS over the past few years and
have greatly enjoyed it. I recently came across a post on Sacha Chua’s blog
mentioning the need for more testers and contributors for the NS-port. I am
willing to contribute my time (2-3 hours a week) to help with the
development of Emacs, as I wish to give back to the community.

Although I am not very well-versed in how to test the program, I am eager
to learn and be of help. Could you please guide me on how I can assist or
point me towards any resources I need to learn in order to contribute
effectively?

Thank you,
Vardhamann

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Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Gerd Möllmann]

Vardhamann B E <be.vardhamann@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello devs,
>
> I have had the pleasure of using Emacs on macOS over the past few
> years and have greatly enjoyed it. I recently came across a post on
> Sacha Chua’s blog mentioning the need for more testers and
> contributors for the NS-port. I am willing to contribute my time (2-3
> hours a week) to help with the development of Emacs, as I wish to give
> back to the community.
>
> Although I am not very well-versed in how to test the program, I am
> eager to learn and be of help. Could you please guide me on how I can
> assist or point me towards any resources I need to learn in order to
> contribute effectively?
>
> Thank you,
> Vardhamann

Hi Vardhamann.

I'm not an Emacs maintainer. I'm a macOS user, exclusively, and
sometimes I'm contributing this or that.

From my POV, what is missing are Cocoa (macOS GUI) developers. The Cocoa
port is unmaintained and has serious stability problems, i.e. it freezes
and crashes much too frequently on macOS.

Without someone familiar with Cocoa who can fix things, testing won't
help much.

My 2 cents only, of course.

Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Charles Choi]

While I do find it somewhat distressing that there are no maintainers for the Cocoa port (is that really true?), I wonder if there are any metrics to support the assertion that the current Cocoa port is unstable. While I don't regularly use the macOS build distributed by GNU, I do use daily the Mitsuharu fork of Emacs on macOS without surprise and have done so for years. Even that though is anecdotal. Are there tickets to back up the story of unstable macOS behavior?

- Charles

—
Charles Y. Choi, Ph.D.
kickingvegas@gmail.com



> On Aug 6, 2024, at 6:08 AM, Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm not an Emacs maintainer. I'm a macOS user, exclusively, and
> sometimes I'm contributing this or that.
> 
> From my POV, what is missing are Cocoa (macOS GUI) developers. The Cocoa
> port is unmaintained and has serious stability problems, i.e. it freezes
> and crashes much too frequently on macOS.
> 
> Without someone familiar with Cocoa who can fix things, testing won't
> help much.
> 
> My 2 cents only, of course.

Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Po Lu]

Charles Choi <kickingvegas@gmail.com> writes:

> While I do find it somewhat distressing that there are no maintainers
> for the Cocoa port (is that really true?), I wonder if there are any
> metrics to support the assertion that the current Cocoa port is
> unstable. While I don't regularly use the macOS build distributed by
> GNU, I do use daily the Mitsuharu fork of Emacs on macOS without
> surprise and have done so for years. Even that though is
> anecdotal. Are there tickets to back up the story of unstable macOS
> behavior?

Carbon Emacs is not the NS port.  It was the FSF port to Mac OS till it
was rendered non-functional by Apple, and these events coincided with
the maintainer's choosing to move development elsewhere.

Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Charles Choi]

Okay, so my impression was the Mitsuharu fork being not that distant from core is arguably wrong. That said, would appreciate any backstory on the Cocoa/NS port which I'd be interested to hear.  

—
Charles Y. Choi, Ph.D.
kickingvegas@gmail.com



> On Aug 6, 2024, at 5:55 PM, Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Carbon Emacs is not the NS port.  It was the FSF port to Mac OS till it
> was rendered non-functional by Apple, and these events coincided with
> the maintainer's choosing to move development elsewhere.

Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[chad]

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On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 10:54 PM Charles Choi <kickingvegas@gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay, so my impression was the Mitsuharu fork being not that distant from
> core is arguably wrong. That said, would appreciate any backstory on the
> Cocoa/NS port which I'd be interested to hear.
>

The two ports use different underlying OS-level graphics technologies, one
known originally as "Carbon" and another as Cocoa (which is based on the
NextSTEP code/concepts, and uses "ns" all over the place because of same.
Apple has changed their official (and, separately, practical) stance on
which toolkits are supported over time. GNU Emacs includes the ns port,
which also works with the free implementation OpenStep (although somewhat
roughly, if I recall correctly).  The details of what Apple
supports/promotes and when they support/promote it are fairly arcane, and
probably aren't that interesting except to software historians. (It has
somewhat to do with the history/development of iOS.) If you're interested
in details, I'll suggest starting here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)

In practice, both toolkits "work" at the moment. The Carbon port has an
active (fork) maintainer, and (obviously) does not support the libre
OpenStep toolkit. The ns port is maintained on a best-effort basis in the
mainline, but has been operating on what I'll call "less than but hopefully
rounds up to one" maintainer for a few years now, and _does_ support the
libre OpenStep.

I myself have been off of macOS for a few years, since which Apple has made
it variously more annoying but not yet (quite?) impractical to use freely
developed software under macOS, but it seems that it's still relatively
easy to get a functional emacs on Apple's quite-good hardware and
mostly-workable OS, either by building it yourself, or using something like
homebrew or emacsformacos.com.

If one wanted to improve the situation for GNU Emacs under macOS, as other
people have mentioned, there is currently a lack of people with time,
interest, access, and expertise with the software underlying the ns port.
Eli has already suggested how to look into the issues from the emacs side.

I hope this helps,
~Chad

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Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Andrea Corallo]

Vardhamann B E <be.vardhamann@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello devs,
>
> I have had the pleasure of using Emacs on macOS over the past few years and have greatly enjoyed it. I recently came
> across a post on Sacha Chua’s blog mentioning the need for more testers and contributors for the NS-port. I am willing to
> contribute my time (2-3 hours a week) to help with the development of Emacs, as I wish to give back to the community.
>
> Although I am not very well-versed in how to test the program, I am eager to learn and be of help. Could you please guide
> me on how I can assist or point me towards any resources I need to learn in order to contribute effectively?
>
> Thank you,
> Vardhamann

Hi Vardhamann,

not an Emacs GUI backend-expert here (even less a Cocoa expert)
but... in order to contribute to Emacs you'll need to have your FSF
paperwork sorted out :)  If you are will to do it I'll send you the
necessary off-list.

Thanks!

  Andrea

Re: Willing to Contribute to Emacs NS-Port Development

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Vardhamann B E <be.vardhamann@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 16:08:24 +0530
> 
> I have had the pleasure of using Emacs on macOS over the past few years and have greatly enjoyed it. I
> recently came across a post on Sacha Chua’s blog mentioning the need for more testers and contributors for
> the NS-port. I am willing to contribute my time (2-3 hours a week) to help with the development of Emacs, as I
> wish to give back to the community.
> 
> Although I am not very well-versed in how to test the program, I am eager to learn and be of help. Could you
> please guide me on how I can assist or point me towards any resources I need to learn in order to contribute
> effectively?

Thank you for your interest in Emacs.

I suggest to start by reviewing the bug reports at
https://debbugs.gnu.org/db/pa/lemacs.html which are specific to macOS,
and try to investigate and propose solutions for those you can.

We also have a list of development tasks in etc/TODO, where you may
find something to your taste and interests.

Subscribing to this list and to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, and
participating in macOS-specific discussions will also be welcome.