Re: Emacs for Windows

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 09:26:15 -0400
> 
> >> How is that going to tell you when a bugfix release has been released?
> > You watch the site where you downloaded the previous one from.
> 
> Right, and of course that's a different site for each package.  To me
> that reads "nightmare" ;-)

That's an exaggeration: there are maybe 2 or sites to watch.

> >> How is that going to choose where to unzip?
> > It doesn't.  _You_ decide.  Some see that as an advantage.
> 
> I can definitely see the advantage of doing things manually, but in my
> experience, the majority of users is not very disciplined, so this one
> reads like "big mess".

Complaints (or rather lack thereof) on my site is evidence to the
contrary.

> >> How is that going to uninstall the old version?
> 
> > No need, the new files will overwrite the old ones.
> 
> >> And of course, you end up with umpteen copies of the dependencies, but
> >> I guess only anal-retentive nit pickers will care about the wasted disk
> >> and RAM space.
> > Exactly.  Besides, other packages, not yet updated, could still need
> > the old dependencies anyway.
> 
> So as long as there's no new release of Emacs (say), you'll keep on
> using whichever version of the libraries was current at the time, with
> their security bugs and all.  Yay!

In that hypothetical situation, I have no choice: the updated library
will most probably be incompatible with the Emacs binary built against
the older one.  I must wait till The Powers That Be produce a new
Emacs binary for me (or build it myself -- which is how the ezwinports
site started).

> > The other form is some kind of installer.
> 
> Which wouldn't make any difference, except maybe in choosing the place
> where you install the files, which is the more minor of the problems.

That's not the point.  The point is, there are no requests to use an
installer.

Give up, Stefan!  You see grave problems where there are at most minor
ones, or none at all.