RFE: Cygw32 GNU Emacs Port

[Daniel Colascione]

On 10/9/12 7:45 PM, Ken Brown wrote:
> [Redirecting from cygwin to cygwin-apps.]

I sent it to the Cygwin list because the last Emacs thread --- the one
about mouse support --- was on that list. I thought -apps was for
release management and such, not general discussion. Apologies.

> 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?

If I wanted to emulate Linux, I'd run VirtualBox. The entire point of
using Cygwin is to *integrate*, to the greatest extent possible, tools
from POSIXland into Windows. Making that integration work better has
been a common theme of everything I've done --- winln, injob, assorted
other things (including a readline-based PowerShell host), and now
cygw32 Emacs. I don't think the goal of Cygwin should be to become
reincarnated POSIX subsystem that, although it might run on the same
kernel as the Win32 GUI stuff, can't interact with regular Windows
applications.

>  We don't provide Win32 versions of other X11 programs as far as I know.

That's true, but only because most programs don't have a Win32 mode
that works under Cygwin. There's also precedent in mintty, which we
provide so that users don't have to run an X11 terminal emulator or
use the deplorable built-in Windows conhost.

> 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.

The vast majority of the GUI code is identical to the NT-native Emacs
port, which has a large userbase and which is well-supported. The
Cygwin underpinnings are identical to the ones in regular Cygwin
Emacs. I'll support the little bit of glue that sits between them. If
I get hit by a bus, just yank the cygw32 port, and we'll be no worse
off than we were before.

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