Re: INSTALL.W64

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (Phillip Lord)
> Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2017 21:15:57 +0000
> Cc: emacs-devel <address@hidden>
> 
> >> Then you'll need to add the following directories to your Windows PATH
> >> environment variable:
> >>
> >>   c:\msys64\usr\bin;c:\msys64\mingw64\bin
> >>
> >> you can do this through Control Panel / System and Security / System /
> >> Advanced system settings / Environment Variables / Edit path.
> >> ====
> >>
> >> I'm not sure this is necessary; are they not default when using the
> >> mingw64 shell?
> >
> > As the next paragraph says, these are needed by Emacs at runtime. I
> > don't modify my system settings; I set the path in a shell script that
> > starts Emacs. But something that changes PATH is required; this is the
> > simplest way to say that, and will work for most people.
> 
> They are not, I think. Emacs runs fine from a directory with no
> modifications. That's how the downloads work.

This is not about running Emacs, this is about running MSYS2 and
MinGW64 utilities required by the Emacs build process.

> >> ====
> >> ** From the FTP site
> >>
> >> The Emacs ftp site is located at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/
> >> ====
> >>
> >>
> >> Not sure an FTP site can be located at https. Think we need to update
> >> the header.
> >
> > It's a valid URL; try going there.
> 
> "FTP" should say "Web". Quite a lot of people won't know what "FTP"
> means.

I don't see a reason to make any changes under this assumption (which
I'm not sure I agree with).  We are talking about people knowledgeable
enough to install a sophisticated development environment; the other
kind will just use the precompiled binaries.  And factually, the above
is accurate: the address gets you to the GNU FTP site, just via a
protocol that is not FTP.

> >> Note also that we need to disable Imagemagick because Emacs does not yet
> >> support it on Windows.
> >> ====
> >>
> >> I have not actually being doing this, but I have been using
> >> --without-dbus.
> >
> > I'm not sure of the full consequences of either of those.
> 
> Nor do I. I don't know if the comment about Imagemagick is still
> correct.
> 
> I don't know why I am going --without-dbus, although I have done it
> since 25.0.90. Good to know if this is a mistake.

They are both not supported, and will cause trouble if not disabled.
We had bug reports about those troubles.

> If MSYS is not active now, I would rename INSTALL.W64 to INSTALL, and
> INSTALL to INSTALL.MSYS

MSYS may not be actively developed anymore, but mingw.org's MinGW
still is, and this combination is still good enough to allow me to
build Emacs and many other packages you see on ezwinports.  So I see
no reasons to deprecate MSYS just yet.

And I object to renaming files for aesthetic purposes.  Renaming makes
some Git commands work worse or not at all across the renaming commit,
so we should only do that if we have a good reason.