Re: Merging feature/android

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: eggert@cs.ucla.edu,  arsen@aarsen.me,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2023 09:12:56 +0800
> 
> 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.

I disagree with your conclusion, and I still think we should complain
noisily if modules cannot be supported.

I wish you stopped arguing and just did what I asked long ago, even if
you disagree.  This minor issue is not worth all the energy and
bandwidth we wasted already, let alone what we are going to waste if
the argument keeps going on.

Please.

> How is this change any different from us bumping the minimum required
> versions of GTK+ or ImageMagick in the past?

I explained how it's different, more then once: support for modules is
very important for Emacs, so omitting is silently is not TRT.