Re: MS-Windows build broken in Fmake_network_process

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Eli Zaretskii writes:

 > I do think that the costs are not too significant, especially since
 > most of the Windows-specific code is in separate source files.  There
 > are currently 188 #ifdefs specific to Windows in non-Windows sources
 > of Emacs; for comparison, there are 112 "#ifdef HAVE_X_WINDOWS" and
 > 100 "#ifdef HAVE_NS".

That's much more objective.  However, it's not a matter of just
counting them.  There are a lot more developers who are relatively
familiar with X Windows, and most POSIX-based developers will be
familiar with X.  They would like to be refactoring code, but they
can't do that if it crosses an #ifdef MSWINDOWS (or whatever the
#define is) unless they're willing to take a hack at implementing the
Windows version.  It was precisely such an exercise that triggered
this thread (or maybe it's a similar thread).

Of course in principle it's symmetrical; I'm sure there are
refactoring exercises you'd like to perform, but are deterred by the
need to fix up POSIX/X Windows/GNUStep code you don't know much
about.  However, this kind of friction, like any friction, imposes
more burden on the faster moving object -- which is the POSIX side.