Subject: bug#76638: Missing README files for Windows releases of Emacs

From: Corwin Brust <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2025 10:08:02 -0500

tags: merge 76638 62509
thank you

On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 4:42 AM Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> > Cc: Corwin Brust <[email-masked]>
> > Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2025 23:48:01 +1300
> > From: Phil Sainty <[email-masked]>
> >
> > https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/README says:
> >
> > > Each major version of Emacs is kept in its own subdirectory. Please
> > > see the README files there for details of how to install and run
> > > Emacs.
> >
> > Emacs 27, 28, 29, and 30 are all missing that file.  Given the parent
> > directory's claim, I'd think the sub-directories should all include
> > this file, which I understand should be a renamed copy of the file
> > nt/README.W32 in the Emacs repository.
> >
> > I also note that the Emacs 27 directory has a different readme file,
> > README-windows-binaries, which is neither in any of the other release
> > directories nor (that I can see) in the repository.  That one is quite
> > different to the README.W32 file, but maybe it was also intended to be
> > included alongside the newer releases.
> >
> > I guess this needs to be fixed manually for the last four releases,
> > and that the release scripts or processes need to be fixed so that
> > this is taken care of in future.
>
> Corwin, could you please look into this?
>

I will.  I think this is better summary of the problem as compared to
the other bug (now merged herewith) where I'd started discussion with
a patch.

For the record, I burned out on that other patch because the
discussion generated changes to my process for making the binaries.  I
have not been enthusiastic to make the suggested changes - I think the
commit hash is useful and stuffing date and time information into
file-names isn't, but none of that is any excuse.  I will pick this
back up starting with figuring out what adjustments i need to make to
my process to make sure I'm tracking the date on which I start making
a given build and then including that date into the file names.  I
expect that manually cleaning up the existing FTP folders to each have
a README should not be too much more.  We have a number of older
snapshots posted that can perhaps be moved to archived status at the
same time.  Once I get things adjusted locally so I can make binaries
per the updated version of the README (as shown in the patch but with
changes requested in that other discussion incorporated) I share an
updated (maybe final) README patch here.  If that's good to go I'll
upload it to the FTP servers and do the archiving (assuming I'm not
waved off from that part; I'd plan to put anything older than two
years that is not the "latest version" of the release version of Emacs
into the archived status as a last step of this "clean-up the FTP
folders and especially fixup the README files!" task).