Re: 64 bit official Windows builds

[Arash Esbati]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Arash Esbati <esbati@gmx.de>
>> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:47:00 +0100
>> 
>> I think that providing bare Emacs binaries without the corresponding
>> dll's is not really user friendly.  I build Emacs on my Win 64bit
>> machine with Msys2/MinGW-w64 and it would be pain if I had to collect all
>> dll's myself somehow.
>
> If you build your own Emacs, you already have all those DLLs
> installed, right?  So you don't need to collect them, right?

My apologies for the unclear sentence.  I meant: I build Emacs on my Win
64bit machine with Msys2/MinGW-w64 and have access to the necessary
DLLs; it would be a pain if I only had bare Emacs binaries and had to
collect all those DLLs myself somehow.

>> [...]
>> So one could say: Consult the PKGBUILD files for the sources
>> (incl. dependencies) for
>> 
>> - mingw-w64-libtiff
>> - mingw-w64-giflib
>> - mingw-w64-libpng
>> - mingw-w64-libjpeg-turbo
>> - mingw-w64-librsvg
>> - mingw-w64-libxml2
>> - mingw-w64-gnutls
>> - mingw-w64-xpm-nox
>
> No, this compromise contradicts the GPL.  The sources must be
> available from the same place as the binaries,

Hmm, I read the FAQ differently:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Can I put the binaries on my Internet server and put the source on a
different Internet site? (#SourceAndBinaryOnDifferentSites)

    Yes. Section 6(d) allows this. However, you must provide clear
    instructions people can follow to obtain the source, and you must
    take care to make sure that the source remains available for as long
    as you distribute the object code.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#SourceAndBinaryOnDifferentSites
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I admit that the "you must take care to make sure that the source
remains available for as long as you distribute the object code." part
makes things more complicated, but still ...

> because otherwise it isn't practical for the user who wants to rebuild
> a DLL (e.g., to fix a bug in it or add a feature) of the exact version
> used to build Emacs.  (If she tries to do that with a different
> version, that version might be incompatible with the specific version
> of Emacs she uses.)  For the same reason, the source distribution
> found near the binary should be of the exact same version used to
> produce the binary, and include any changes done by whoever built the
> binary.

True, from a developer point of view.  But not required by GPL if I get
it correctly.

Please, don't get me wrong here, I do understand your point.  But from a
user point of view, I think Emacs becomes more attractive on Windows
if it is provided as a self-contained binary package.

Best, Arash