Re: Emacs 29.0.50 Snapshot binaries for WIndows

[Corwin Brust]

Thank you for commenting, Dr. Stallman.

On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 10:57 PM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>
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>
>   > As much for my own testing as for yours, I have created a set of
>   > binary "snapshot" releases of Emacs for Windows.
>
> Do we have something lie this for GNU/Linux?

I would be happy to make similar point in time snapshots for
additional platforms.  Bob, of savannah hackers notoriety, has
suggested there are some servers that may be available to us that I
suspect would be suitable toward automating this process, e.g. Arch
would be easy to target, I think.

If this is a request I will look further, but see below.

> Or is there some reason why there is no need for them on GNU/Linux?

As others have said, distributions most provide all that is needed to
make either self-compilation from master trival, and to automate that
locally or via development repositories of packaged software.
Moreover, they accept into these repositories consistent (we hope, and
trust) with their own stated promises, with which we must trust
(actually: "teach") users to have understood and, indeed, to prefer.
(They did select this distro/OS, after all..)

So, if we try to make snapshots for GNU/Linux, we are likely "chasing
the tail" of efforts happening (and which, indeed, should be
happening) nearer to users' explicitly trusted sources/controls (for
example, when taking in pre-built versions of Emacs' dependencies for
their platform, when not building those from sources).

Perhaps another approach could do something similar that might be more
interesting to GNU/Linux users..

Firstly ,I consider the impact in this case to be "bug reports".  In
creating snapshot and pre-release builds, our goal is to help find
platform specific problems as soon as possible before making
(especially xx.1) releases. Also, when we invite those users who
can't/won't compile Emacs from the git repository for themselves, we
are creating additional opportunities for people to become involved
with Emacs development, and perhaps the GNU project and the Free
Software Foundation.

[[As others have said "up thread", and I hope is clear, it is really
fairly easy to self-build Emacs, at this point, on nearly any "flavor"
of GNU/Linux user environment, almostly certainly more so than
"anywhere else". ]]

My first idea is to use the infrastructure had Bob mentioned may be
available to create automated snapshots builds once or several times
per day, each using a different GNU/Linux distribution.  We could then
run Emacs' test suite, They results of these runs would be sent via
email to "a few people" -- actually, via a new
"emacs-continuous-build@gnu.org list, but I think few would subscribe
;)  Running some automated form(s) of the performance metrics SM and
Andreas have been discussing seems like a very tempting target, if
something like this is attempted.

A second, and likely compatible/interconnected idea to document
"recipies" for self-building Emacs, perhaps putting such a document
into admin/README.SNAPSHOT-DISTRO.  For such providers as Debian, this
is likely a matter of finding the right file to quote.   In fact (to
me) this seems like a terrible task, to keep such a document current.
In fact, the only way I can think to manage the task that sounds like
fun would be to automatically pull the recipes used for a "continuous
build testing" implementation.  But, since all the software involved
here would be Free Software, there is no reason that cannot be done.

Sorry for sending such a long message to answer such short questions.
I happen to think there's an important opportunity in creating builds
of Emacs and testing them automatically.  I hope you find the idea(s)
interesting.

>
> It would not be right to give more support to Windows than to
> the GNU system itself.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>