file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[Will Parsons]

I'm confused about what I should expect for file uncompression with
native Windows Emacs.  I'm running:

GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (i686-w64-mingw32)

Curiously, if I visit a file compressed with bzip2, Emacs has no
problem opening it, but if I visit a file compressed with gzip, Emacs
complains that "Uncompression program 'gzip' not found".

How is this supposed to work?  I don't see any compression binaries
packages in the Emacs installation directory, but I do have an
ezwinports directory that contains bzip2 utilities, so perhaps Emacs
is using that (but how does it know?)  If ezwinports is the source of
bzip2 for Emacs, I don't see similar gzip utilities, so I'm quite
confused.

-- 
Will

Re: file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Will Parsons <varro@nodomain.invalid>
> Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2016 20:29:03 -0500
> 
> I'm confused about what I should expect for file uncompression with
> native Windows Emacs.  I'm running:
> 
> GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (i686-w64-mingw32)
> 
> Curiously, if I visit a file compressed with bzip2, Emacs has no
> problem opening it, but if I visit a file compressed with gzip, Emacs
> complains that "Uncompression program 'gzip' not found".
> 
> How is this supposed to work?  I don't see any compression binaries
> packages in the Emacs installation directory, but I do have an
> ezwinports directory that contains bzip2 utilities, so perhaps Emacs
> is using that (but how does it know?)

Yes, Emacs probably uses that binary.  You should see a message to
that effect in *Messages*.  How does it know? it looks along your PATH
to find the executable it needs.

> If ezwinports is the source of bzip2 for Emacs, I don't see similar
> gzip utilities, so I'm quite confused.

You should be able to find a Windows port of gzip on the GnuWin32
site:

  http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gzip.htm

AFAIK, that's what I'm using; never bothered to port a newer version
because that one does a good-enough job for my needs.  (But of someone
points out why newer versions are so much better, I might be tempted
to provide their binaries.)

I'm quite sure there's a 64-bit port of gzip available from the MSYS2
site, but you'll have to find it yourself, or maybe someone else here
could post a URL.

Re: file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[Óscar Fuentes]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I'm quite sure there's a 64-bit port of gzip available from the MSYS2
> site, but you'll have to find it yourself, or maybe someone else here
> could post a URL.

MSYS2's gzip depends on the MSYS2 runtime (a Cygwin fork), it does not
provide a MinGW-w64 variant of that package (there is bzip2, though).

This is one of the reasons why I install my Emacs with uncompressed
files (no .elc.gz, .info.gz, etc).

IIRC the MSYS2 maintainer is worried about the possibility of some MSYS2
script picking up MinGW-w64 (native) binaries when they should use the
MSYS2 (POSIX) ones. That was his reasoning for not providing `grep'
until some of us convinced him and now that package is "use it at your
own risk" in case you use MSYS2 for running POSIX-based build systems.

Re: file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[B. T. Raven]

On 12/8/2016 19:29, Will Parsons wrote:
> I'm confused about what I should expect for file uncompression with
> native Windows Emacs.  I'm running:
>
> GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (i686-w64-mingw32)
>
> Curiously, if I visit a file compressed with bzip2, Emacs has no
> problem opening it, but if I visit a file compressed with gzip, Emacs
> complains that "Uncompression program 'gzip' not found".
>
> How is this supposed to work?  I don't see any compression binaries
> packages in the Emacs installation directory, but I do have an
> ezwinports directory that contains bzip2 utilities, so perhaps Emacs
> is using that (but how does it know?)  If ezwinports is the source of
> bzip2 for Emacs, I don't see similar gzip utilities, so I'm quite
> confused.
>

ezwinports is probably in your path. Type "where bzip2.exe" to see if 
this is so. A couple of gzip binaries for w32 are here:

http://www.gzip.org/   ;; put them one of them in the same directory 
where bzip2 is now and emacs should find it.

It looks like you need both bzip2 and bunzip2 (and maybe 
bzip2recover.exe plus a dll in case something goes wrong). gzip 
decompresses with the -d switch. Since gzip is older it's probably more 
reliable but I don't know much about it since I use only decompression 
(usually with 7-zip).

Ed

Re: file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[Will Parsons]

On Friday,  9 Dec 2016 10:10 AM -0500, B. T. Raven wrote:
> On 12/8/2016 19:29, Will Parsons wrote:
>> I'm confused about what I should expect for file uncompression with
>> native Windows Emacs.  I'm running:
>>
>> GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (i686-w64-mingw32)
>>
>> Curiously, if I visit a file compressed with bzip2, Emacs has no
>> problem opening it, but if I visit a file compressed with gzip, Emacs
>> complains that "Uncompression program 'gzip' not found".
>>
>> How is this supposed to work?  I don't see any compression binaries
>> packages in the Emacs installation directory, but I do have an
>> ezwinports directory that contains bzip2 utilities, so perhaps Emacs
>> is using that (but how does it know?)  If ezwinports is the source of
>> bzip2 for Emacs, I don't see similar gzip utilities, so I'm quite
>> confused.
>
> ezwinports is probably in your path. Type "where bzip2.exe" to see if 
> this is so. A couple of gzip binaries for w32 are here:

You're absolutely right.

> http://www.gzip.org/   ;; put them one of them in the same directory 
> where bzip2 is now and emacs should find it.

I downloaded a Windows version of the gzip utilities from gnuwin32 and
put them in a directory in my PATH, and now Emacs has no difficulty
opening them.  I had expected a more "official" way of handling
(de)compression, but I'm happy.  Thanks!

-- 
Will

Re: file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[Gene]

On Thursday, December 8, 2016 at 8:29:07 PM UTC-5, Will Parsons wrote:
> I'm confused about what I should expect for file uncompression with
> native Windows Emacs.  I'm running:
> 
> GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (i686-w64-mingw32)
> 
> Curiously, if I visit a file compressed with bzip2, Emacs has no
> problem opening it, but if I visit a file compressed with gzip, Emacs
> complains that "Uncompression program 'gzip' not found".
> 
> How is this supposed to work?  I don't see any compression binaries
> packages in the Emacs installation directory, but I do have an
> ezwinports directory that contains bzip2 utilities, so perhaps Emacs
> is using that (but how does it know?)  If ezwinports is the source of
> bzip2 for Emacs, I don't see similar gzip utilities, so I'm quite
> confused.
> 
> -- 
> Will

Though this may look-like or seem-like something specific, if you use GNU Emacs for Windows long enough you'll discover other problems arising from unixoid development and operational environment of Emacs.
So if you'd rather fix the problem systemically rather than piecemeal as you encounter problems you might want to consider installing Cygwin then using the package cygwin-mount to point to the repository of unixoid apps/programs/filters which emacs had available to it during it's formative years and pretty much retains to date.

Here's a snippet from my package list:
  cygwin-mount       20131111.2146 installed             Teach EMACS about cygwin styles and mount points

Another incidental advantage of having cygwin installed is that you can run emacs under cygwin if/when you want or need to use emacs in a Unix-like environment, for example with BASH running as a shell in a buffer.

If you DO opt to install Cygwin I recommend that you follow Steve Yagi(sp)'s advice and NOT install it in c:/cygwin, but rather directly in c:/ so the executables will end up in c:/bin/

I've encountered the same problems you have with decompression.
I've often just launched GNU emacs for cygwin from cygwin's terminal then effortlessly converted those compressed files, exited cygwin, then accessed the decompressed files via GNU emacs for Windows.

Re: file uncompression with native Windows Emacs

[Jonathan Groll]

On Tue, 13 Dec 2016 15:13:09 -0800 (PST), Gene <gene.sullivan@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Though this may look-like or seem-like something specific, if you use GNU Emacs for Windows long enough you'll discover other problems arising from unixoid development and operational environment of Emacs.
> So if you'd rather fix the problem systemically rather than piecemeal as you encounter problems you might want to consider installing Cygwin then using the package cygwin-mount to point to the repository of unixoid apps/programs/filters which emacs had available to it during it's formative years and pretty much retains to date.
> 
> Here's a snippet from my package list:
>  cygwin-mount       20131111.2146 installed             Teach EMACS about cygwin styles and mount points
> 
> Another incidental advantage of having cygwin installed is that you can run emacs under cygwin if/when you want or need to use emacs in a Unix-like environment, for example with BASH running as a shell in a buffer.
> 
> If you DO opt to install Cygwin I recommend that you follow Steve Yagi(sp)'s advice and NOT install it in c:/cygwin, but rather directly in c:/ so the executables will end up in c:/bin/
> 
> I've encountered the same problems you have with decompression.
> I've often just launched GNU emacs for cygwin from cygwin's terminal then effortlessly converted those compressed files, exited cygwin, then accessed the decompressed files via GNU emacs for Windows.


Alternatively, the Anniversary Update for Windows 10 includes the
Ubuntu bash shell, and it is possible to run emacs in this
subsystem.

I haven't tried this myself, but am curious to know how well this
works in practise, so if anyone here has tried it out, please do share
your experiences.

Cheers,
Jonathan