Re: Emacs vista build failures

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>>>>> Why don't you use perl for example instead?
>>>> Chicken and egg.  Installation scripts have to rely on what is there.
>>> But you can build exectutable from perl scripts, or is not that
>>> possibility there any more?

We needed a single executable for making installations and upgrades as
simple as possible for customers (they'll break everything otherwise).
A self-extracting batch file is doable reasonably well (once unzip.exe
has been installed).  Appending an archive to a .exe file is not as
feasible, in contrast.

>> It means pulling in a lot of external technology for just a simple
>> scripting job.  Why should we do that if what is present in Windows
>> is so great?
>
> I guess you know perl, of course. I might misunderstand what you are
> actually doing. There is vbs too and different installation
> software. But let us drop this, I just wanted to give a suggestion.

The main point is that we needed something we can support and that does
not deviate too much in functionality from our existing supported code.
Pulling in entirely different external technology just for installation
was not an option when "everything is there".

> I agree this is a weak and disturbing point on w32, escpecially when
>you are used to have powerful scripting languages available. This is
>however not what w32 programmers use.

Whatever.  After wasting in the order of manyears on this endeavor, we
have reverted to GNU/Linux installs.  People insisting on Windows get a
virtual machine.

I don't think I know of any multi-platform free software project where
the Windows port is not responsible for the most hair-tearing and
frustration.

-- 
David Kastrup