Re: [feature/internal-msys] thoughts of a more function windows package

[Phillip Lord]

Wayne Harris via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
writes:

> Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:
>
>> Nikolay Kudryavtsev <nikolay.kudryavtsev@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Sorry for late reply, but I think that while bundling msys2 is a good
>>> idea in theory, in practice it would turn into a complete
>>> nightmare. The problem, just like with bundling any third party
>>> components is that you have to maintain them. If you bundle the latest
>>> and shiniest msys2, you can never be sure if it's really properly
>>> working for our use cases. And if you bundle some pretested version,
>>> you run into "hey, please fix bug A, the upstream has already fixed
>>> it", but we can't switch to upstream due to bug B.

>> There is always the risk that msys and Emacs work inconsistently since,
>> with this scenario, msys could update at any point that breaks things. I
>> don't think that there is any solution to this than to say that the last
>> release version of Emacs will work with a version of msys which is about
>> current at the time of release. What else can we do? In the case, that
>> basic Emacs functionality fails, people could always fall back to the
>> fully bundled Emacs with DLLs that is currently available.
>>
>> The current situation where Emacs without msys2 lacks basic capabilities
>> such as git handling which many other editors have bundled is also
>> problematic!
>
> (*) Introduction
>
> I'll share my opinion as a user of the GNU Emacs and Windows.  I'll try
> to summarize my context to help you decide whether it's worth reading
> the entire message.  Maybe the context of this thread is a bit off of
> mine, so perhaps the difficulties I mention don't quite apply to what
> Phillip Lord is considering.

Always useful, to get feedback since I rarely use Emacs on windows
myself.


> (*) Summary
>
> Unless this coupling Emacs-MSYS2 can be well done with a certain
> long-run guarantee, I'd still prefer put them together with my own
> hands, because this way I can guarantee the behavior of the programs I
> expect to get.  So I think I'd need an assurance of always having a
> certain exact (verified with a hash sum) version of msys2.
>

I can certainly appreciate that. I sit somewhere in the middle: I use
Emacs build from master, but most of my emacs packages are specific
versions, rather than running from everyones heads.

But, like it or lump it, msys2 doesn't do that. They have a versioned,
hash summed installer, but after that it just updates to the latest
version, with no specific release pattern (or a rolling release if you
prefer). I want to try and avoid replicating what msys2 already does
which, conversely, means I can only do what msys2 does.


> As an example, I've built my own OpenBSD distribution because I wanted
> an assurance in the behavior of the system, besides a quick
> installation.  I install it with a single command line and it asks no
> questions.  It comes ready to do all the things *I* usually do.

Something close to this, I think we could achieve. Install Emacs, have
it ask "do you want to link to an msys2 installation? Do you want to
install it? Do you want to update it with Emacs standard packages".

So three questions, but not none.

Phil