XEmacs as a Cygwin64 package.

Mon Jun 30 22:39:13 GMT 2025

Dan Harkless via Cygwin writes:
> To be clear, "32-bit" was a modifier to "Cygwin", not to "XEmacs". 
> There are no more 32-bit Cygwin maintainers, because it's been
> discontinued, no?  That being said, I downloaded the Cygwin list
> archives so I could find the last time I asked about this on the
> list.  It was in 2021, after the xemacs package for 64-bit Cygwin had
> been dropped, but before support for 32-bit Cygwin ended (the
> following year).  Reportedly, XEmacs was having build problems on
> 64-bit Cygwin.  When I asked for more info on that, here's the
> response that was sent:
>>     From: Henry S. Thompson
>     Date: 2021年10月28日 09:47:10 +0100
>     Subject: [HEADSUP] Phasing out old Windows versions and 32 bit support
>      [XEmacs for 64-bit?]
>     In-Reply-To: <dc5fd4c5-62a9-2e27-0425-274be9f1d141@gmail.com> (Dan
> Harkless
>      via Cygwin's message of "Wed,円 27 Oct 2021 15\:36\:45 -0700")
>     References: <YXhrJUHpQ+VvO8Xj@calimero.vinschen.de>
>      <dc5fd4c5-62a9-2e27-0425-274be9f1d141@gmail.com>
>     Message-ID: <f5ba6itv8mp.fsf@ecclerig.inf.ed.ac.uk>
>>     Dan Harkless via Cygwin writes:
>     > ...
>     > Anyone know more about the difficulty in getting those packages to
>     > work on 64-bit?
>>     Um, yes, I did a lot of work on that back in 2015 and got it working
>     under Cygwin, with a lot of help from Vin Shelton, but never to the
>     point of public release because it _only_ compiled with gcc, not with
>     native Windows C tool chain.
>>     I still use it every day, it crashes about once a week.  Given the
>     demise of 32-bit, I'll try to get back to it some time in the next few
>     months, but there's other stuff in the queue ahead of that...

That last paragraph is mostly true, except thta crashes are very rare.
That is, I'm actively using XEmacs in a 64-bit up-to-date Cygwin, it
compiles with gcc and runs out-of-the-box. I also regularly use many
of the XEmacs packages with no obvious platform-related issues.
How easy that means it will be to build a Cygwin package is another
matter, as I have no experience with cygport.
There is a closed issue [1] which suggests that compilation under
Visual Studio for Win32 is working.
ht
[1] https://foss.heptapod.net/xemacs/xemacs/-/issues/5
-- 
 Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND
 e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
 URL: https://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
 [mail from me _always_ has a .sig like this -- mail without it is forged spam]