Re: Directory structure changes in Emacs installed on MS-Windows

[Andy Moreton]

On Thu 04 Apr 2013, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> As part of my work on building the native MS-Windows Emacs using the
> Posix configury and Makefile's, I intend to change the structure of
> the installed Emacs directory tree, so that it more closely resembles
> installations on Posix systems.  The details are below.
>
> Does anyone see any disadvantages in making these changes?
>
> Here's what the installed Emacs directory tree will look like:
>
>   %emacs_dir%/bin -- binaries that users invoke: emacs.exe,
>                      runemacs.exe, etags.exe, ctags.exe, addpm.exe
>
>   %emacs_dir%/libexec/emacs/VERSION/i686-pc-mingw32 --
>                      auxiliary binaries that Emacs invokes:
>                      cmdproxy.exe, hexl.exe, ddeclient.exe
>
>   %emacs_dir%/share/info -- Info manuals
>
>   %emacs_dir%/share/man -- man pages
>
>   %emacs_dir%/share/emacs/VERSION/lisp -- Lisp files
>
>   %emacs_dir%/share/emacs/VERSION/leim -- Leim files
>
>   %emacs_dir%/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp -- site-specific Lisp
>
>   %emacs_dir%/share/emacs/VERSION/etc -- architecture-independent
>                      files: DOC, tutorials, image files, themes, etc.
>
>   %emacs_dir%/var/games/emacs -- Emacs game score files
>
> %emacs_dir% stands for whatever directory Emacs is installed in, and
> VERSION stands for the Emacs version, like 25.5.
>
> The advantages of this arrangement, as I see them, are (1) it follows
> the installation tree on Posix platforms, so will make things easier
> for those who work on both kinds of platforms; (2) it will become
> possible to have several Emacs versions installed that can be invoked
> without any need to tweak PATH or rename the DOC file; (3) it will be
> possible to share the installation tree with other platforms,
> e.g., install Emacs on some remote volume shared via a network.
>
> Comments?

This all looks sensible to me.

I assume that you are doing this work with MSYS. Using the Posix
configury would also work for using the win32 hosted mingw64 compilers
with MSYS, and also for the cygwin hosted mingw64 cross compilers.

Getting the cygwin hosted cross compilers working would then be a
stepping stone to getting linux hosted mingw64 cross compilers
working (after sorting out how to handle dumping in a cross build).

    AndyM