Re: cannot build on w32

[Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org>]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:16:52 -0500
>> From: Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org>
>
>> 2. people who _build_ emacs themselves usually already have cygwin
> Not all of them do.  I don't, for example.

yes, and rms does not use browsers. so? :-)

>> > (And for building on a single platform, autoconf is overkill anyway, IMO.)
>>
>> that's what autoconf is for: so that you do not have to have a
>> separate build systems for various platforms.
>
> As the recent bugs with introducing gnulib show, autoconf is not a
> panacea: when used on a platform that's radically different from the
> one where a change was tested, using autoconf does not promise
> success.

I think you got it exactly wrong.
autoconf - when used on _all_ platforms - is the solution.
the _problem_ is that it is not used on on some platforms (win32) and
this is why emacs does not build on windows now.
if autoconf were used on windows, emacs would have built ootb.

at any rate, you are the maintainer of emacs on window, and this
decision is up to you.
since you are dead set against using unix tools (cygwin et al), we
will be stuck with configure.bat for the foreseeable future.
I am not complaining, of course...
-- 
Sam Steingold <http://sds.podval.org>