Re: Merging feature/android

[Po Lu]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Only because you keep insisting that it's needed.  My preference is to
> leave it "default ON" on all platforms.  I see no reason why having
> Android users see the error and re-run configure with ifavailable (if
> needed) would be such a catastrophe.  We _want_ Emacs to be capable of
> loading modules, and we want the user to be aware if the build cannot
> do that, so that the user could take the remedial action if possible.

Because (on many systems, not just on Android) a working version of GCC
is not a small dependency required for networking, or some
easy-to-install image library, but a massive piece of software that is
difficult to install and keep working.  Emacs currently also doesn't
work on systems where the linker refuses to link with `dlopen' by
default:

  % ./configure CC='gcc445'
  ...
  checking for dlopen... no
  configure: error: Dynamic modules are not supported on your system

and requires tweaking:

  % ./configure CC='gcc445' LDFLAGS='-Wl,-insecure -lc'

dynamic modules, being a niche feature (count the number of packages on
ELPA and NonGNU that provide them), do not deserve such special
treatment, so configure should not insist that they be available, at
least on any system where GCC is not typically available.

How is this change any different from us bumping the minimum required
versions of GTK+ or ImageMagick in the past?  From the POV of users
running the older versions, GTK+ or ImageMagick support silently
disappeared without warning.