From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Emacs build on Windows: Prerequisites Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 01:55:46 +0900 Message-ID: <87r6sai5m5.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1172681227 9114 80.91.229.12 (28 Feb 2007 16:47:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:47:07 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Emacs Devel To: dhruva Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Feb 28 17:47:00 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HMRxB-0005xZ-Di for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:46:57 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HMRxC-00049B-3z for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:46:58 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HMRx0-00048w-JT for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:46:46 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HMRwy-00048k-7Z for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:46:45 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HMRwx-00048h-W1 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:46:44 -0500 Original-Received: from mtps02.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1HMRwx-0005lM-8q for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:46:43 -0500 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mtps02.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A7717FF6; Thu, 1 Mar 2007 01:46:41 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 49AB21A26AA; Thu, 1 Mar 2007 01:55:47 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM 7.17 under 21.5 (beta27) "fiddleheads" (+CVS-20070216) XEmacs Lucid X-detected-kernel: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:67044 Archived-At: dhruva writes: > Hi, > I have been building emacs on windows so far with no issues as I had > all the required executables in place. > I had to move to a new machine and realized that I did not have some > of the UNIX shell utilities (ex: cp, rm..) on my windows box. Indeed, that is annoying. > Why should Emacs build on windows need those tools? Why can't it use > the windows equivalents? Because they're not equivalent. They are by and large much less powerful, with idiosyncratic syntax that often does not mix well with scripts and idiosyncratic semantics such as rather low limits on number of command line arguments, causing mysterious build failures. They also do not stay the same across Windows versions. I haven't heard of them changing across SPs in Windows XP, but indeed some of the utilities lost options or changed their spelling across SPs in both Windows 2000 and Windows NT. > This will make it easier for me to build. That has not been our experience at XEmacs. Easier for the users, perhaps. But that came at a high cost in developer and tester time, a cost you will bear alone. Be that as it may, other users and the Emacs developers will be less able (and possibly less willing) to provide assistance if perchance you have some difficulty in building. I don't think you really come out ahead on the deal. YMMV, of course. > Is there any particular reason to make the availability of the UNIX > commands mandatory? It's free software, nothing is mandatory except the license under which you redistribute, if you do. However, many Emacs functions depend on running utilities, and you will find aspell, diff, patch, ... in the same place that you find the fileutils. I wouldn't be surprised if dired works better with ls than with dir, and so on and so forth. Having the usual suite of utilities is likely to make your Emacs experience much more enjoyable. BTW, IMO David is too sensitive; your post was quite reasonable, especially given the well-known policy of Emacs to give precedence to support for free platforms. However, AFAICS it's not a question here of regretfully allocating scarces resources away from support for native Windows solutions; it's simply better all around to ask Windows users to spend a few minutes and a few megabytes downloading and installing the standard utilities from Cygwin or MSYS.