Subject: bug#14513: 24.3.50; Site load-path pieces differ in MSYS build

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 22:29:29 +0300

> Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 20:14:35 +0100
> From: Richard Copley <[email-masked]>
> 
> > >   c:\>dir /B c:\emacs
> > >   emacs-111818
> > >   emacs-112125
> > >   emacs-112416
> > >   site-lisp
> >
> > You can still have separate directories like that, unless I'm missing
> > something.  The directory structure below emacs-NNNNNN directories
> > will be different, but that's all.
> >
> 
> Also the site-lisp directory will not be on the load-path.

Your site-lisp won't, but the one in ROOT/share/emacs will.

> I'm not actively using more than one build.

Then why do you need separate trees?  That's the only reason why you
need the site-lisp outside of the Emacs tree.  Use the Posix-standard
structure and one root for all the Emacs installations, and the
problem is gone, because you have the common site-lisp directory in
ROOT/share/emacs.

> > it should be easy to create a simple script that, given a root
> > directory and a version, will delete the subdirectories that belong to
> > that version only.  There aren't too many directories to delete,
> > basically libexec/emacs/VERSION and share/emacs/VERSION.  That, and
> > the emacs-VERSION*.exe executables in bin/.
> >
> > Did I miss something?
> >
> 
> With the uninstallation? No idea. It's ok, there's no way I'll be doing
> that.

You mean, you will never uninstall?  Then why do you keep the versions
separate?

> > The new structure has advantages which I described in that mail in
> > March.
> 
> (1) You're the first one I know about who thinks that's important.

Well, maybe I'm the only one who works on so many platforms.

> (2) is wrong.

It's not wrong as long as you keep all the installations under the
same root, like /usr/local on Unix.

> (3) I don't follow. Other platforms, really?

Yes.  Imagine that your --prefix is on a networked volume that can be
accessed from Windows and Unix systems alike.  Then only the
architecture-dependent files (binaries) need to be separate;
everything under %emacs_dir%/share/emacs/ can be installed only once
and used by Emacs from any OS.