Re: Trouble saving to the emacs file dir under Windows

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:39:18 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Davin Pearson <davin.pearson@gmail.com>
> 
> > > c:\Program Files (x86)\emacs-24.5\share\info>chmod 666 dir
> > > chmod: changing permissions of 'dir': Permission denied
> > > 
> > > What gives?  How do I go about getting write access to the file "dir"?
> > 
> > Is that file really a read-only file?  Does its Properties tab in
> > Explorer show the Read-only attribute set?  If not, chmod won't help
> > you, and your problem is probably due to the fact that your user is
> > denied access to "Program Files" and everything under it.  In that
> > case, the solution is not to install Emacs under "C:\Program Files",
> > but elsewhere, preferably on disk D.
> 
> I am trying to write an automated installer module that patches the dir
> file to add an additional link to a file jtw-manual.info.  My installer module complains about not being able to save the file "dir".
> 
> If there is no way to change the file "dir" then my system will be less usable 
> to users of GNU Emacs on Windows systems.   Everything works fine under Linux, although the user has to be in logged in as root to patch the "dir" file, among
> other things.
> 
> I thought that there must be a way of writing to the "dir" file...

You didn't reply to any of the questions I asked.  You also didn't
tell enough about your installer module.  So it's hard to help you
more.

One thing I can add to what I already said: the usual way of modifying
the 'dir' file is by running the 'install-info' utility.  Not sure if
doing so will solve your problem, but manually updating 'dir' is not a
good idea, either.

> It is possible under GNU/Linux to change the "dir" file.  That may be some way forward here.  The user could boot into Linux and run the installer script which
> enables them to access the C:/Program Files (x86)/ folder.

IME, installing data files under "C:\Program Files" is asking for
trouble.  IME, all those problems go away if you install on a
non-system drive.  But I already said that.