Some findings and suggestion about Emacs on w32

[Lennart Borgman]

After compiling Emacs CVS with MinGW+MSYS on ms windows I have some simple
suggestions. Please tell me if I am misunderstanding something here!

1) I suggest that MinGW+MSYS is mentioned in the doc as the primary
environment for building Emacs on w32. It works well if some small problems
are removed (see below).

2) Addpm.exe currently has a switch /q that does not work under MSYS since
this is believed to be a path there. Replace this with -q (or add it as an
alternative). This must be changed in nt/makefile.w32-in too.

3) Addpm.exe should perhaps only add emacs_dir to the registry? Are the
other values really used?

4) Addpm.exe besides changing the registry adds an shortcut to the Start
menu in GNU Emacs/Emacs that points to runemacs.exe. This is perhaps not
very good? Adding this entry could make a user believe that this is how
Emacs should be used. (I believed that for a long time and therefore did not
use Emacs. I wanted to, but it did not gave me the functionality I needed
invoked this way! I needed gnuserv.) I suggest that addpm.exe should not add
this entry.

5) Emacs without gnuserv is in my opinion very crippled on w32. Gnuserv
should in my opinion be part of Emacs distribution for ms windows. I suggest
the version from http://www.wyrdrune.com/. I suggest that CVS should include
this gnuserv.

6) The docs should be clearly telling that gnuserv should be used on ms
windows.

7) MSYS should include a newer version of Texinfo. (This is of course not
something Emacs Devel should fix, I tell this jus to inform you.) As far as
I could see Emacs Info could not be built with makeinfo 4.3 which is what
currently is in MSYS. I have in another mail suggested that version 4.6 from
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ should be included in MSYS.

8) The procedure for building on w32 (NT) is not currently merged with the
normal build procedures in all places as far as I can see. I suggest that
they should be in the long run, but realises that this takes some time. In
the mean time I suggest changing the docs so that a user on w32 can
immediately be redirected to the relevant docs. Just put a note at the top
the docs! (Several persons have told me that they found it very difficult to
build Emacs on ms windows. It is not, but it is confusing to read the docs.)

- Lennart