RE: windows installer

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > Such binaries used to be delivered more often.  If there
> > were a simple "push-button" command to create them locally,
> > which didn't require anything else, I might well take
> > advantage of that too.
> 
> It's not going to get any simpler than "./configure;make install"
> complete with all the environment that this entails.

Does that work on out-of-the-box MS Windows?  I doubt it.

Emacs users on Windows are not necessarily developers
of/on Windows.  A "builder" that contained everything
it needed, and kept it contained, tossing afterward
whatever is not needed to run the built Emacs, would
be what I'm talking about.

Other binaries (e.g. Msys stuff) are less the problem
that a C compiler, `make', etc.  Push-button building
without depending on a separate development environment.
I.e., the builder would bring its own build tools, and
clean them out when done building.

> > But is it not the case that this "installer"
> > also _builds_ Emacs for Windows?  If not then apologies
> > for misunderstanding.
> 
> No. The builder builds the installer. It's a self-extracting
> zip file on steroids.

IIUC, none of those steroids help me, IIUC.  I don't care
to "install" this or that Emacs build.  I just want to get
builds or be able to push-button-create them.  I don't want
something messing with my Windows registry, menus, HOME,
PATH, or anything else.  Get the build job done without
depending on anything else pre-existing, and leave no
footprints behind.

(I understand now that that is not what you are trying to
do here.  I'm just trying to make clear what I was looking
for.)
 
> > If so, wouldn't that be a good thing?  Folks who don't
> > want to hassle with obtaining and installing whatever
> > tooling is necessary to build Emacs could build it
> > easily and so might follow Emacs development more
> > closely, potentially providing more timely feedback.
> >
> > Just a thought.  As it is now, I wait until there is
> > a pretest or release before seeing what has changed
> > and reporting problems or offering suggestions.
> 
> I think we are good here. I put support for snapshot building in, and
> I've automated as much of the stuff around that as I can. So, I should
> be able to do it more frequently; probably monthly, as I haven't managed
> to automate things from start to finish.

Great.  It will be good to return to periodically uploaded builds.  
 
> So, not quite what you want in that you will need to install msys to do
> the build, but at least it will be easier for someone else to do it for
> you, if you don't wish to do this.

Thanks for working on this.