RFE: Cygw32 GNU Emacs Port

[Christopher Faylor]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 10:45:01PM -0400, Ken Brown wrote:
>[Redirecting from cygwin to cygwin-apps.]
>
>On 10/9/2012 10:19 PM, Daniel Colascione wrote:
>> GNU Emacs 24.3, due out in about a month, will have a new
>> configuration option: --with-w32.  When built this way, Cygwin Emacs
>> uses native Win32 widgets instead of X11. The resulting "cygw32" Emacs
>> looks just like NT Emacs, but is a native Cygwin application with full
>> support for Cygwin paths, ptys, and so on.
>>
>> The default is still to build Emacs for X11.
>>
>> When we release Emacs 24.3 packages for Cygwin, would it be possible
>> to add a package for users who want to use cygw32 Emacs?
>
>It would be easy enough for me to do, assuming it builds without a 
>problem.  But I have a couple of qualms about it:
>
>1. This strikes me as going against the spirit of Cygwin, which tries to 
>emulate Linux.  Why shouldn't users who want a GUI version of emacs just 
>use emacs-X11, as they would on Linux?  We don't provide Win32 versions 
>of other X11 programs as far as I know.
>
>2. Because there is so much Windows-specific code in it, I wouldn't feel 
>competent to support it if users have problems.  I'm not at all familiar 
>with that kind of programming.
>
>I'd like to hear what others think, especially cgf and Corinna.

I had similar mild concerns about the "un-Cygwinness" of it.  But, we do have
other packages like mintty which have specific Windows code in them and, even
the X package has to have Windows code.

So, I'd leave the decision entirely up to your competent hands.  I'm
amazed that you do such a good job supporting such a complicated package
already so I'd expect that you could pick up the Windows stuff
eventually.  The only question is really if you want to take on the
added support costs.

Maybe you could release it as a test package and see just how much bother
it could be?

Otherwise, I could say ABSOLUTELY NOT and you could blame me.  :-)

cgf