Re: Directory structure changes in Emacs installed on MS-Windows

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@member.fsf.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> As part of my work on building the native MS-Windows Emacs using the
> Posix configury and Makefile's, I intend to change the structure of
> the installed Emacs directory tree, so that it more closely resembles
> installations on Posix systems.  The details are below.
>
>
> Does anyone see any disadvantages in making these changes?

I gather we will just need %emacs_dir%/bin in Windows PATH (as we need
now), not also %emacs_dir%/libexec/emacs/VERSION/i686-pc-mingw32 (emacs
will put the latter in exec-path by default).

If that's true, then I see no problem.

> The advantages of this arrangement, as I see them, are 

You left out:

(0) it simplifies the task of using the Posix configury

I think that's important.

> (1) it follows the installation tree on Posix platforms, so will make
> things easier for those who work on both kinds of platforms;

Yes, but only minimally. I work on both platforms currently, and have
never noticed that the Windows install was non-standard. 

I think that's because Posix doesn't have %emacs_dir% as the root, so I
already think of Windows as being "just different".

> (2) it will become possible to have several Emacs versions installed
> that can be invoked without any need to tweak PATH or rename the DOC
> file; 

I don't follow this; there is only one place for emacs.exe. Currently I
handle this by using a different %emacs_dir% for each emacs version.

I guess you could have %emacs_dir%/bin/emacs-VERSION.exe ? Does the
Posix install do that (I've seen that convention for some tools).

When I install an alternate Emacs version on a Posix system, I put it in
/usr/local/bin, with the original in /usr/bin.

-- 
-- Stephe