Re: Win32 GnuTLS DLL installer?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 17:49:32 +0300 Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote: 

>> From: Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>
>> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2017 10:28:03 -0400
>> 
>> (A possible use case for the security-patches package/repo/mechanism
>> could be to check the DLL version and notify the user if it's outdated.

EZ> How do you define "outdated"?  GnuTLS developers maintain 3 branches
EZ> in parallel, and release versions from all the 3 branches.  Which one
EZ> should we follow, and does any N+1 release from that branch mean that
EZ> the N release is considered "outdated" and should be replaced?

That's usually the platform's responsibility, but in this case it seems
up to us. I would keep up with the current branch (whatever was
installed already) at least, on the principle of least surprise.

EZ> Moreover, accommodating a new version of GnuTLS might mean changes to
EZ> Emacs C and/or Lisp sources -- are we going to release patches to
EZ> the core sources through ELPA or something?

Theoretically the current branch will not require that. I would just
post a non-intrusive message to the user for now.

EZ> IOW, this sounds like a major undertaking on our part, and I'm sure
EZ> more and more issues will pop up as we consider the implications.  I'm
EZ> not sure we want to become a de-facto "distro" for MS-Windows users,
EZ> as I don't think we have the resources, even if we have the desire.

Agreed, I wasn't suggesting all of that. It does seem like a general
Emacs update process may be more appropriate, like Cygwin does, but
simple messaging is a lot easier and less risky.

Ted