Subject: Re: bug#37527: [PATCH] Install C source code for for debugging help

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 10:18:38 -0800

On 1/26/20 8:13 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> they are both unreliable

Only if we make them so. As things stand, emacs-source-directory is more 
reliable than source-directory is, and if we remove the configure-time option to 
omit installation of source code (a step I favor) we will make 
emacs-source-directory even more reliable than it is now.

It's long past time that we stopped making Emacs source code a second-class 
citizen. The GNU philosophy is that it should be easy to see the source, and we 
should be guided by that philosophy here.

We cannot rely on distributors to make things easy here. Some distributors do 
not install source; others install it in different places, only optionally, and 
do so in obscure ways that most users don't know about. Distributors will follow 
our lead if we install the source in a well-specified place. If we tried instead 
to find the nook or cranny (if any) where the current distributor squirrels away 
the Emacs source code, this problem would continue to be a maintenance headache 
for us. It's not worth the hassle.