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Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:47:01 +0300
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT gnu DOT org>
Subject: Re: Difficulties compiling emacs with gcc 4.6.2
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> From: Rugxulo <rugxulo AT gmail DOT com>
> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:43:20 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> > The native Windows build of Emacs uses a separate file, unexw32.c.
> > Cygwin uses yet another file, unexcw.c.
> 
> If it were me, I'd ask the Windows dudes to help us, but I don't know
> if they're sympathetic (and I heavily doubt it).

Guess who are "the Windows dudes" these days ;-)

> > I'm under a lot of pressure from various Emacs
> > contributors to drop the DJGPP support.  They question the size of the
> > user community that would like the DJGPP build to continue to exist.
> 
> Who cares about marketshare? If that were the only factor, nobody
> would use Linux instead of Windows. But it is true that DOS is heavily
> in decline, and I only use it as a hobby "for fun".

The existence of the DJGPP port imposes certain restrictions on what
the Emacs developers can and cannot do.  One issue is to prevent file
names from clashing in the 8+3 namespace, so that the release tarballs
could be unpacked on plain DOS filesystems.  For example, just
recently one developer wandered why the Emacs Info files don't have
the .info extension, and I needed to explain that doing so would
produce foo.info, foo.info-1, foo.info-2, etc. file names that will
clash.  Also, a couple of old source files are not deleted only
because the DOS build needs them.

> However, from a quick search, it seems the big problem to them is 8.3
> filenames. I know you probably wouldn't like the idea, but I'd rather
> rely on DOSLFN (or, if hating VFAT, StarLFN) instead of dropping the
> port entirely.

Requiring a Windows platform for building will probably be the first
step, yes.