From 9e34b514e77ada6ff7981ded3996486964c519bf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Eli Zaretskii Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 10:34:34 +0300 Subject: [PATCH] Explain in nt/INSTALL.MSYS why --prefix should be used with Windows builds. --- nt/INSTALL.MSYS | 15 +++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/nt/INSTALL.MSYS b/nt/INSTALL.MSYS index 0c67c20e842..3fb8c1d5321 100644 --- a/nt/INSTALL.MSYS +++ b/nt/INSTALL.MSYS @@ -46,7 +46,8 @@ Windows 9X as well). It is always preferable to use --prefix to configure Emacs for some specific location of its installed tree; the default - /usr/local is not suitable for Windows. + /usr/local is not suitable for Windows (see the detailed + instructions for the reasons). You can pass other options to the configure script. Here's a typical example (for an in-place debug build): @@ -324,7 +325,17 @@ Windows 9X as well). ./nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX ... Here PREFIX is the place where you eventually want to install Emacs - once built, e.g. d:/usr. + once built, e.g. d:/usr. We recommend to always use --prefix when + building Emacs on Windows, because the default '/usr/local' is not + appropriate for Windows: it will be mapped by MSYS to something like + C:\MSYS\local, and it will defeat the purpose of PREFIX, which is to + install programs in a single coherent tree resembling Posix systems. + Such a single-tree installation makes sure all the other programs + and packages ported from GNU or Unix systems will work seemlessly + together. Where exactly is the root of that tree on your system is + soimething only you, the user who builds Emacs, can know, and the + Emacs build process cannot guess, because usually there's no + '/usr/local' directory on any drive on Windows systems. You can pass additional options to the configure script, for the full list type -- 2.39.2