Re: GnuTLS for W32

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es>
> Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:14:28 +0100
> 
> >    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-side_assembly
> 
> That requires an installer that follows MS guidelines.

And granted, the DLLs that were causing the hell come with an
installer.

> It's not as easy as unzipping a file on a directory.

Nobody suggested that; it was an aside.

> I think that Emacs is right now capable of loading a dll from an
> arbitrary place.

With great care, yes.  dynamic-library-alist is carefully hand-crafted
to DTRT with several DLLs of different versions on the same machine.
Just pushing arbitrary file name there is not the best idea.

> Just set dynamic-library-alist as it contains ('gnutls
> . "/path/to/gnutls/gnutls.dll") (or whatever are the right names).

Putting DLLs in arbitrary places is not TRT.  We should put it in the
same directory where emacs.exe lives, and then there's no need to do
anything with dynamic-library-alist.

> Installing a dll intended to be used by Emacs on a shared place is
> asking for trouble.

Please give me the credit that when I do that I know what I'm doing.
I have been doing that for years with no problems at all.  I'm sure
others have succeeded in learning a few simple rules of how to do this
safely.  That's why an _option_ to do it available to knowledgeable
users would be a bonus.  The default place should be where emacs.exe
lives.