Re: GnuTLS for W32

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 00:14, chad <address@hidden> wrote:

> When you do manual checks, do you run a program that checks for updates,
> downloads them, and then installs them; or do you load up a web browser,
> visit some project pages from memory/bookmarks/etc, and start downloading
> and unpacking zip files?

Well, for the operating system I do the first, because it is what the
system allows. For other software, I do visit the page, unload zip
files or whatever and unpack them.

> I'm trying to understand your reasoning for objecting to a default setting 
> that
> would notify the user about critical issues.  Either I'm not understanding 
> what
> you're saying, or you're saying that the default users shouldn't have a 
> feature
> that many (I'd say `vast majority', but `many' is enough) because it might
> cause you to have to type `n' a few times, and that doesn't match what I
> expect from seeing your efforts on emacs-devel.

My objection is at a more fundamental level: we should not be
distributing binaries. For Windows, we are forced (more or less),
because most Windows users do not have a build environment, so we
should distribute the minimal binary that can possibly work and leave
options to the user.

The objection is twofold: on one hand, the more we do, the less
"customizable" the system is. Of course a dedicated user can change
anything, but defaults tend to be widely used and rarely questioned,
at least on systems with (relatively) unexperienced users, like
Windows. On the other hand, and as I've already said three or four
times, this is a software development project, not a packaging one. We
don't build an "Emacs distribution", we distribute Emacs source
tarballs. That's what I think we should continue doing. I see a lot of
people arguing how secure and convenient will be to have automatic
upgrades, and I wonder why nobody but me finds weird that we are
dedicating so much energy to discuss *binaries* in the first place. At
which moment did we switch goals? Once we have this wonderful system
for the Windows binaries, are we going to start distributing binary
tarballs for RedHat, Ubuntu or gNewSense? Is that what we want to do?
Certainly is not what I want to do, and it pains me seeing resources
diverted to that.

> To my knowledge, emacs is the *only* software I use under windows that 
> doesn't do this, but I don't use windows very often, and mostly just for 
> playing certain computer games. Can you suggest a few `user' applications 
> that don't?

FreeOffice. Battle for Wesnoth. TrueCrypt. Just out of my head, I
haven't checked the software installed in my computer.

    Juanma