Re: Finding the dump

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 03:53:33 -0500
> 
> > I plan to look into the possibility of putting the dump file inside
> > the executable (portably, of course) so that Emacs startup needn't
> > worry about finding the dump file. This would be significantly better
> > for installers and users.
> 
> Allowing the dump file to be a shebang-executable is easy, doesn't
> require a C compiler at dump-time, and works well under GNU/Linux.
> It can't be "the only way" because it works less well under MacOS and
> not at all under Windows (IIUC), but I see no reason not to support it.

Its relative complexity is such a reason, IMO.

By contrast, opening and reading a file is simple, is portable, and
works well.  The issue with finding it via argv[0] is relatively
simple to solve.  And if we for some reason decide that argv[0] is not
reliable enough, I already mentioned up-thread an alternative of using
platform-specific techniques to obtain the full absolute file name of
the executable without relying on argv[0].

I see no reason to increase complexity and introduce methods that
expose system dependencies on the user level due to the issue that
started this thread.  IME, having OS-dependent differences in Emacs
invocation and installation is a disadvantage, it complicates the user
manual and bug-reporting instructions, if nothing else.