emacs-pretest-bug
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: comint.el: EMACS environment variable


From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: comint.el: EMACS environment variable
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:20:10 -0500

    IIUC, the problem that triggered the change from EMACS=t to
    EMACS=/where/is/emacs was that some configure scripts (unrelated
    to Emacs) assumed that the environment variable EMACS -- if set --
    contains the full directory file name of the Emacs executable.

I think that these configure scripts are following a general
convention for configuration files.  The convention is not stated
explicitly, but it is implicit in this part of standards.texi:

    Specifying variables as arguments to @code{configure}, like this:
    @example
    ./configure CC=gcc
    @end example
    is preferable to setting them in environment variables:
    @example
    CC=gcc ./configure
    @end example
    as it helps to recreate the same configuration later with
    @file{config.status}.
    @end table

We cannot criticize them for using EMACS to specify where to find
Emacs after we suggested using CC to specify where to find cc.

So I think the only correct solution in the long term is to move to a
different variable (such as INSIDE_EMACS) to say "you're inside
Emacs".  This means we should start setting the other envvar now.

There are two ways to do the transition: with EMACS=t or with
EMACS=<<file name>>.  When we changed it to <<file name>>, we
thought that would be upward compatible.  Since it is not,
it means that for the short term we have to choose between one
set of bugs and another.

I think we will have fewer bugs if we put EMACS back to t.

So let's set both EMACS and INSIDE_EMACS to t.




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]