RE: Support for MS-Windows build of Emacs (was: Warnings during building the current master on Win10 with MSYS2/MinGW64)

[Tom Davey]

Eli Zaretskii writes: 

> This is not an April 1 joke: if there's a significant community interested in 
> being able 
> to run and develop Emacs on MS-Windows, someone should volunteer to take care 
> of the build on a day to day basis, or else the conclusion is that there's no 
> general 
> interest in that platform among the Emacs community that is high enough to 
> justify 
> the investment.

More than one billion end-user computer systems run some version of Microsoft 
Windows. Emacs users on Windows usually have no say in their choice of an OS; 
the rules are set by their employers. 

Appendix H of the Emacs Info Manual expresses this sentiment -- "We support GNU 
Emacs on proprietary operating systems because we hope this taste of freedom 
will inspire users to escape from them." -- but this is not how corporate IT 
departments see the situation. Considerations of security, centralized 
management, and end-user support make Windows a hard requirement for tens of 
millions of desktops that could benefit from Emacs. 

Abandoning the behemoth that is Windows strikes me as self-defeating for Emacs. 
Nobody will get a "taste of freedom" if Emacs fails to provide it to Windows 
users in the first place.

I do not work as a computer programmer; my technical skills are infinitesimal 
compared to the people on this list. Emacs, for me, is a very powerful business 
tool for managing projects and tasks (via Org-mode) and an equally powerful 
tool for writing prose. I see it becoming my preferred client for generative AI 
as well. 

I support the Org-mode developers via an annual donation to Librepay. I would 
happily do the same to keep the Windows builds of Emacs on par with other OSes.

On my two computers, desktop and laptop, evaluating emacs-version() currently 
returns "GNU Emacs 29.3 (build 2, x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2024-03-24". My 
heartfelt thanks to those who made and continue to make this possible. 

Eli, thank you for issuing the warning.

--
Tom Davey
tom@tomdavey.com
New York NY USA

-----Original Message-----
From: emacs-devel-bounces+tom=tomdavey.com@gnu.org 
<emacs-devel-bounces+tom=tomdavey.com@gnu.org> On Behalf Of Eli Zaretskii
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2024 1:53 AM
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Cc: Arash Esbati <arash@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Support for MS-Windows build of Emacs (was: Warnings during 
building the current master on Win10 with MSYS2/MinGW64)

> From: Arash Esbati <arash@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2024 22:16:12 +0200
> 
> after a long time, I built Emacs (baf9f1210a) from master on my Win10 
> box and it occurred to me that I get more warnings than I used to.  
> This is with
> 
> $ gcc --version
> gcc.exe (Rev3, Built by MSYS2 project) 14.1.0

Sadly, the MS-Windows port of Emacs is basically not taken care of anymore.  
There are no active developers on board who seem to care about it, except yours 
truly.  I see this in the (lack of) responses to Windows-specific bugs and 
issues reported to the bug tracker: no one chimes in, even if I deliberately 
leave a bug report without responses for many days.  As my free time is 
severely limited, I only care about aspects that affect me directly (and the 
64-bit build and GCC 14 are way outside that scope).

If no one comes forward and starts taking care of the MS-Windows issues, I'm 
very close to the decision of declaring the Windows build of Emacs 
"unsupported", meaning anyone who needs it are "on their own", from my POV as 
the (co)maintainer.

This is not an April 1 joke: if there's a significant community interested in 
being able to run and develop Emacs on MS-Windows, someone should volunteer to 
take care of the build on a day to day basis, or else the conclusion is that 
there's no general interest in that platform among the Emacs community that is 
high enough to justify the investment.

You _have_ been warned!