Re: INSTALL.W64

[Phillip Lord]

Stephen Leake <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden (Phillip Lord) writes:
>> Specifically:
>>
>> ====
>> Then you'll need to add the following directories to your Windows PATH
>> environment variable:
>>
>>   c:\msys64\usr\bin;c:\msys64\mingw64\bin
>>
>> you can do this through Control Panel / System and Security / System /
>> Advanced system settings / Environment Variables / Edit path.
>> ====
>>
>> I'm not sure this is necessary; are they not default when using the
>> mingw64 shell?
>
> As the next paragraph says, these are needed by Emacs at runtime. I
> don't modify my system settings; I set the path in a shell script that
> starts Emacs. But something that changes PATH is required; this is the
> simplest way to say that, and will work for most people.

They are not, I think. Emacs runs fine from a directory with no
modifications. That's how the downloads work.



>> ====
>> ** From the FTP site
>>
>> The Emacs ftp site is located at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/
>> ====
>>
>>
>> Not sure an FTP site can be located at https. Think we need to update
>> the header.
>
> It's a valid URL; try going there.


"FTP" should say "Web". Quite a lot of people won't know what "FTP"
means.



>
>> ====
>>   git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git emacs-25
>> ====
>>
>> Obviously out-of-date for emacs-26
>
> Arg. I thought I searched for all emacs-25; obviously not. On the other
> hand, we don't want to update this file if the only change is the
> version, and it does say "something like", so I suggest we leave it.
>
>> ====
>> Note also that we need to disable Imagemagick because Emacs does not yet
>> support it on Windows.
>> ====
>>
>> I have not actually being doing this, but I have been using
>> --without-dbus.
>
> I'm not sure of the full consequences of either of those.

Nor do I. I don't know if the comment about Imagemagick is still
correct.

I don't know why I am going --without-dbus, although I have done it
since 25.0.90. Good to know if this is a mistake.


>> ====
>> if your MSYS2 make supports
>> ====
>>
>> It will, will it not?
>
> Yes, since it's Gnu make. Not worth editing just for this.
>
>> I'm also a little dubious about "INSTALL" -- I use the proceedure in
>> INSTALL.W64 with a few path changes. Do we really need two INSTALL
>> docs?
>
> I believe nt/INSTALL is the process Eli and others use to build using
> the older 32 bit MSYS. I have not tested it. We could perhaps rename to
> INSTALL.W32, but that would be misleading since MSYS2 can build 32 bit
> executables. Better would be to rename both, to INSTALL.MSYS and
> INSTALL.MSYS2, and perhaps add a paragraph at the start making it
> clearer what the difference is. Or we could merge the two, with
> "if/then" in appropriate places.

If MSYS is not active now, I would rename INSTALL.W64 to INSTALL, and
INSTALL to INSTALL.MSYS


>> Finally, is it worth linking to the build scripts?
>
> What build scripts? I guess you mean the ones you've been adding.
> I see admin/nt/dist-build/build-dep-zips.py, but only in master.


No, they are on emacs-26 also. I should have done this ages before the
pre-test, but building by hand as I did for Emacs-25 was not something
that it was good to carry on with.

Phil