Re: [Texmacs-dev] Fwd: guile-devel Digest, Vol 212, Issue 4

[Sebastian Miele]

Massimiliano Gubinelli <m.gubinelli@gmail.com> writes:
> I just noted on the guile mailing list that having Guile-2 on Windows
> seems a bit tricky. So we should take this into account when we will
> shift to it (if we do it).

The complete thread starts here:

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2020-07/msg00110.html

The gist:

The Guile maintainers generally assume some things that are
provided/fulfilled by POSIX, but not by Windows (per se). Especially
64bit and threads are a (huge) problem.

However, that does not apply when running with a POSIX emulation layer
(Cygwin, MSYS2) or with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2). Cygwin has
the latest Guile (3.0.4) on x86-64, probably with threads / without any
limitations. And seemingly all previous Guiles. I did not find a web
package list for, e.g., WSL2 Ubuntu, but I strongly suspect the
situation is similar. MSYS2 does not have Guile 3, yet. But it is
unlikely that it will not.

As far as I understand www.texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html, Cygwin
may already be required to run TeXmacs on Windows. Is that the case?

Possible downsides of depending on Cygwin, MSYS, and/or WSL2:

* Maybe Cygwin introduces a performance penalty? (Probably no big deal.)
  Somewhere I read that WSL2 in some cases is even faster than native
  Linux, whatever that exactly means. (Even more likely no big deal.)

* There may be slight nuisances for a Windows user: Using emulated POSIX
  paths. Having to press the button in Windows 10 that activates WSL2
  and installs a WSL2 distribution. Or having to install Cygwin or
  MSYS2. (But that should all be a breeze and clearly explainable on one
  page.)

* Qt somehow should be used in such a way that it is not required to run
  an X Server. I.e. it probably should use the view on the filesystem as
  Cygwin/MSYS2/WSL2 does, but nonetheless use the usual Qt-on-Windows
  graphics and input methods. It is not unlikely that that already is
  solved in the TeXmacs source, at least for Qt4. Is that the case?