Re: cannot build on w32

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:16:52 -0500
> From: Sam Steingold <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> > Sorry, requiring Emacs users on Windows install Cygwin just to build
> > Emacs is out of question.
> 
> 1. you don't need cygwin, just mingw.

You mean, MSYS?  That's Cygwin in disguise, and buggy.

> 2. people who _build_ emacs themselves usually already have cygwin

Not all of them do.  I don't, for example.

> > (And for building on a single platform, autoconf is overkill anyway, IMO.)
> 
> that's what autoconf is for: so that you do not have to have a
> separate build systems for various platforms.

As the recent bugs with introducing gnulib show, autoconf is not a
panacea: when used on a platform that's radically different from the
one where a change was tested, using autoconf does not promise
success.

Anyway, let's not beat a dead horse.  The Windows build support might
have needed a lot of work when it was originally done, but lately it
only requires minimal efforts.  This case is a very rare exception,
and it broke other platforms, not only Windows.  So I would certainly
not draw any radical conclusions from it.