Re: GnuTLS updates proposal

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sat, 25 May 2013 00:47:41 -0400 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 

SM> Now I lost you.  How did we go from "gnutls" to "we"?
SM> Shouldn't some gnutls guys take care of that?

>> So far they have not and it's not a priority to them.  Eli did a lot of
>> work cleaning up the code and getting it to compile--it's thanks to him
>> that Emacs has a recent GnuTLS DLL.

SM> So, why should this fall on us?  I mean, is Emacs the only program
SM> using gnutls?
SM> If so, why?  what do other programs use?
SM> If not, what do the other programs do about it?

GnuTLS is not a popular solution.  OpenSSL is far, far more popular and
well supported on W32 and other platforms.  So there isn't a good sample
size to answer that question.

In addition, Emacs itself is not an application, it's more of a platform
IMO.  That makes it a little more responsible for keeping its libraries
up to date than most applications, again IMHO.

>> So, as far as building the GnuTLS DLLs, I'm hopeful we'll find a way to
>> automate that but not hopeful that it will happen on the GnuTLS
>> maintainers' side.  Building them on Mac OS X is trivial.  This is the
>> "hard work" part and Eli already pointed out we'll need volunteers and
>> resources.

SM> Ah, so the problem is not only for Windows but also for Mac OS X?

Yes, because on Mac OS X there is no authoritative package manager
either.

>> Whoever provides the actual DLLs, there has to be a package maintainer
>> for the GNU ELPA package of GnuTLS;

SM> As a user, I wouldn't like it for a program such as Emacs to decide it
SM> will take over responsibility for a generic library used by other
SM> programs, so I find the idea of distributing it via GNU ELPA rather odd.

If it was a program, sure.  The closest analogue to Emacs on W32 is
Cygwin as a whole, which does provide its own updates.

I realize my proposal is not the way we've always done things and seems
odd and unusual.  My goal right now is to collect votes for or against
my proposal, especially from the maintainers.  If everyone but me says
it's a bad idea, then it probably is.

Ted