Re: GnuTLS for W32

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:21:14 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote: 

EZ> No, it is _not_ hard for the user to put the DLL in the correct
EZ> directory.  It is hard for _us_, the programmers of package.el, to
EZ> select a fixed directory that would work for all users, so that we
EZ> could hardcode its absolute file name in the Emacs sources.  An
EZ> entirely different issue.

The addendum is "...and so GnuTLS is available to non-Emacs processes
too" which is something I did not consider carefully but your mention of
wget brought up.  We don't want multiple versions of the GnuTLS DLL all
over the place, that could be worse for security than a single outdated
version.  So the package.el install is not a good W32 solution to
deliver GnuTLS, after all.

On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:51:28 +0100 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LMI> And since the (major) binary GNU/Linux distributions will be providing
LMI> the gnutls libraries with Emacs, then we should, too?  :-)

We should find a way, yes.  But we should be smart about it, and a
GnuTLS installer, separate from Emacs, would benefit far more users and
projects, and it would use the right APIs to deploy the DLL.

On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:10:14 +0100 Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> wrote: 

ÓF> The standard MS installers have a mechanism for detecting when a dll is
ÓF> in use and, if the result is positive, arrange things for updating it on
ÓF> the next restart or login. A poor's man method for detecting when a dll
ÓF> is in use is just trying to overwrite it (after you know that you have
ÓF> write access to the file).

Because of this, I think we (emacs-devel and gnutls-devel) should just
put together a W32 installer for GnuTLS.  Obviously this would be
connected to the GnuTLS project but I think Nikos (whose name I've
misspelled as Nicos a few times) could use some help with such an
installer.  Is there another GNU project that provides a W32 DLL
*self-updating* installer, so I can get them started with that project?

I may end up owning that installer, we'll see what the GnuTLS developers
want.  But it would let GnuTLS issue updates, remove a release
dependency between their project and Emacs, and remove the tedious
requirement of downloading a zip file and installing it manually.

On the Emacs side on W32, if GnuTLS is not installed, we should tell the
user how to install it by pointing to the W32 installer (running it
automatically is probably too aggressive).  The more I think about it,
the more appropriate this solution seems for everyone concerned.

Ted