Emacs for sites with different operating systems and CVS.

Emacs for sites with different operating systems and CVS.

[Galen Boyer]

When maintaining Emacs for a site where users are on different
platforms, should you

  Check in compiled code for each platform?
  Check in source and give them the scripts to build for each platform?
  Check in the tar file and let them untar to their directories while
  just maintaining external packages?

I think the second option, but then why is there, seemingly, a specific
source tree for the windows Emacs?  Are there different steps because
there are special files and such which therefore make it difficult to
build windows from the same source as Linux as ...

Is there anyplace I can go to know what I should do to build Emacs from
one source for multiple platforms, or do I dig through all of the notes
and such in the etc directory.

Are there any manuals and howtos as well as FAQs for site-admins?

-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Re: Emacs for sites with different operating systems and CVS.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Galen Boyer <galenboyer@hotpop.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: 27 May 2003 23:05:18 -0500
> 
> When maintaining Emacs for a site where users are on different
> platforms, should you
> 
>   Check in compiled code for each platform?
>   Check in source and give them the scripts to build for each platform?
>   Check in the tar file and let them untar to their directories while
>   just maintaining external packages?
> 
> I think the second option, but then why is there, seemingly, a specific
> source tree for the windows Emacs?

Because Windows users are used to get pre-compiled binaries.  The main
reason for this is that Windows systems normally don't have a compiler
installed on them, so most Windows users cannot themselves build
Emacs.

OTOH, with the proliferation of Unix systems where the compiler is an
optional product not installed by default, perhaps the Unix version
should be a binary as well.

> Are there different steps because
> there are special files and such which therefore make it difficult to
> build windows from the same source as Linux as ...

The main issue to figure out is how to install Emacs so that it will
find all its files.  Emacs (as well as other GNU packages) has the
names of the directories where to find files hard-coded into it.  The
configure script takes care of creating a header file where those
directories are spelled out, as determined by the configuration
procedure.  So the pre-compiled binary expects its Lisp, Info,
subprograms (such as etags), and other auxiliary files to be in
certain places; you must make sure that these directories exist on the
target system and the files Emacs looks for are in those directories.
(Of course, the usual Unix tricks with symlinks can help you out.)
Either that, or make sure that environment variables which override
the default locations of these files are all set appropriately on the
target system.

> Is there anyplace I can go to know what I should do to build Emacs from
> one source for multiple platforms, or do I dig through all of the notes
> and such in the etc directory.
> 
> Are there any manuals and howtos as well as FAQs for site-admins?

I don't know of any docs about this, but the above kinda summarizes it
all.  Feel free to ask more, though.

Re: Emacs for sites with different operating systems and CVS.

[Jason Rumney]

Galen Boyer <galenboyer@hotpop.com> writes:

> I think the second option, but then why is there, seemingly, a specific
> source tree for the windows Emacs?

It is only seemingly. The source is the same. A copy of the source is
kept in ftp.gnu.org:/gnu/windows/emacs so that people downloading the
Windows binary can find it easily.

> Are there different steps because there are special files and such
> which therefore make it difficult to build windows from the same
> source as Linux as ...

Windows has a different default shell, and different tools than the
typical Unix system. But with Cygwin, it is possible to build Emacs
using the standard configure and make steps.