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Subject: RE: Patch for Cygwin's Emacs dired.el and loaddefs.el
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 12:17:10 -0400
Message-ID: <BADF3C947A1BD54FBA75C70C241B0B9E10AACD@ex02.idirect.net>
From: "Harig, Mark A." <maharig AT idirect DOT net>
To: "Robinow, David" <drobinow AT dayton DOT adroit DOT com>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robinow, David [mailto:drobinow AT dayton DOT adroit DOT com]
> Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 10:42 AM
> To: Harig, Mark A.; Joe Buehler; cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
> Subject: RE: Patch for Cygwin's Emacs dired.el and loaddefs.el
> 
(text deleted)
> 
>   Not sure if I qualify as "someone" wrt this issue, but I have an
> objection.
>   cygwin is for ports of unix tools. I can't see where you have ported
> anything.
>  Why increase the size of the distribution for no possible benefit?
> 
> > Here are the packages I plan on adding:
> > 
> > http://www.gnu.org/manual/elisp-manual-21-2.8/info/elisp-info.tar.gz
> > 
> >
http://www.gnu.org/manual/emacs-lisp-intro/info/emacs-lisp-intro.info.gz
> Right, that's where they are, there and at numerous mirrors. 
> Why add them to cygwin?
>
> >Of course, those two packages completely independent of the Emacs
package.
>
> >BTW, in some future version of Emacs, the Lisp Intro is planned
> >to be integrated into the Emacs distribution.

Two reasons:

  1. Convenience.  Many people don't know where to find these documents,
but
     can quickly navigate through 'setup' to find them.  In fact, many
     people don't even know that they exist.  My guess is that this is
     part of the reason why the Emacs Lisp Intro is being added to the
     Emacs CVS repository.

     Keep in mind that many (most?) packages included in the Cygwin
     distribution "compile out of the box", and so an argument could
     be made that it's not necessary to include any of those packages
     in 'setup'.  After all, any one who wants them could simply
     download them from one of the many mirrors and build/install
     them on their own, decreasing the size of the Cygwin mirrors.
     Similarly, most GNU/Linux packages could be obtained directly
     from the sources.  Red Hat, SUSE, Mandrake, et al., exist
     because people find it useful to have a large set of those
     packages built for them, and more, installed and set up for them.

  2. Because it is basic documentation.   There exist large libraries
     of Elisp code on many sites (the one at Ohio State comes to mind).
     Should Cygwin include these libraries on their mirrors?  (Where
     do you draw the line?  Cygwin includes Perl.  Shouldn't it then
     include all of CPAN?)  Documentation for Emacs Lisp is distinct
     from those libraries because of its generality.  It is not a
     particular package.  It is the instructions for creating any
     package.  That is why I think that it should be included, but the
     many libraries of Elisp code should not.

     If you think it should not, then wouldn't that argue that the
     documentation for Perl and Python should be excluded also?

---

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