From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93scar_Fuentes?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs 26.1 on Windows is HUGE Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 05:34:40 +0200 Message-ID: <8736mhticv.fsf@telefonica.net> References: <87d0loujuf.fsf@telefonica.net> <87y34bxzoo.fsf@russet.org.uk> <87h8axwsv6.fsf@russet.org.uk> <83k1ftfitn.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="22155"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Apr 17 05:35:10 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hGbLq-0005e9-8Y for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 17 Apr 2019 05:35:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:46206 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hGbLp-0003rS-Az for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 16 Apr 2019 23:35:09 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:34409) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hGbLb-0003r3-Kn for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 16 Apr 2019 23:34:56 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hGbLa-0008Ti-Ll for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 16 Apr 2019 23:34:55 -0400 Original-Received: from [195.159.176.226] (port=45840 helo=blaine.gmane.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hGbLa-0008TL-Du for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 16 Apr 2019 23:34:54 -0400 Original-Received: from list by blaine.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hGbLY-0005Il-Rv for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Apr 2019 05:34:52 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Cancel-Lock: sha1:vLorgn+gv0Boubsty9szzQgX/kI= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 195.159.176.226 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:119947 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii writes: >> From: Björn Lindqvist >> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:18:27 +0200 >> Cc: Óscar Fuentes , help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org >> >> As someone who don't use MSYS I don't understand the advantage of >> duplicating the files? > > This has nothing to do with MSYS. It's for when you install the next > version, emacs.exe gets overwritten, but emacs-26.1.exe stays, and you > can still invoke it. IOW, it allows you to have several Emacs > versions installed simultaneously. > > We didn't invent this for Windows, this is how Emacs installs itself > on all supported systems. We just follow that on Windows, to be > consistent with all the other systems. To be fair, on *nix (where the current build and install system was developed) emacs is a symlink to emacs-XX-Y, so there is no disk space wasted. On Windows that's not the case. Having multiple installed versions makes sense for Emacs developers and for users who build from sources and don't want to delete the old version before testing the new one. But for most users, who install packaged binaries, it is not all that important. I see little real application for that duplication on Windows and hardly anybody will care about not having emacs.XX.Y.exe along with emacs.exe. For many years that was the case and nobody complained AFAIK. I don't really care about this duplication on Emacs, though, as it is a comparatively minor offender. The lack of usable symlinks on Windows makes certain packages to use more than 1 GB of disk space (without debug info) when on GNU/Linux use a fraction of that, just because the developers of those packages work on *nix and take symlinks for granted.