Re: Could we include diff and grep (etc.) executables on Windows?

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>>> Maybe streamlining the MSYS way to install Emacs is the easiest/best way
>>>> to solve this problem?
>>> Depends on what you mean by that (and what you mean when you say "MSYS").
>
> God question.  IIUC one of the main problems with bundling tools is
> having to compile them, keep the versions up-to-date, distributing the
> sources, etc....
>
> So what I meant mostly was: don't actually bundle them, but just provide
> some straightforward way to install Emacs+tools where the tools are
> actually fetched from some other place that handles the job of
> compiling, keeping them up-to-date, distributing the sources, ...
>
> I assumed MSYS could be that "other place" but apparently that's not
> the case.  Maybe that doesn't invalidate the underlying idea, tho.

There is an emacs package currently in MSYS2, with both mingw-w64 and
msys2 versions (for emacs 26.2). I have not tried them (mainly because
they didn't used to be there), so I don't know what other packages/tools
they install.

There are also emacs packages in Cygwin, for text and X11 (for emacs
26.3); I have not tried those in a long time.

So "die-hard" mingw or cygwin users are already covered. That leaves the
Gnu distribution of Emacs for Windows to cover the remaining users,
which are probably a very diverse lot.

I compile emacs from source (usually master, sometimes the release
branch), and use MSYS2/mingw64 for all tools not provided by emacs (as
do many others). For tools not yet in MSYS2 (primarily LaTeX), I use
Cygwin. This process does have some downsides, but I find it the best
way.

-- 
-- Stephe