Re: Android port of Emacs

[Po Lu]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Here are some more facts to put the maintenance burden into perspective:
>
>   - The Android port is being developed by one person in his limited
>     spare time, and even under those circumstances was completed in 4
>     months.  Synchronizing it with other changes being made to Emacs is
>     trivial: even as it stands right now (in a feature branch), less
>     than 5 minutes of my time are required to merge the master branch
>     and prepare new prebuilt binaries each morning.
>
>   - Problems posed by the Android platform have already been solved, and
>     the solutions are likely to benefit users of other systems as well:
>     input method and touch-screen support come in to mind.
>
>   - There are many free software programmers with Android development
>     expertise, especially when compared to those who have experience
>     developing for systems such as DJGPP.  Thus, if necessary, it should
>     be much easier to locate a replacement Android port maintainer than
>     one for the MS-DOS port.
>
>   - More commentary on the Android port is going to be written before it
>     is installed.
>
> If the Android port is installed, other Emacs developers are invited to
> make changes without consideration towards the Android port.  I will
> correct the fall-out, or the Android port will be broken.
>
> Thanks.

As for the size of the Android port wrt other ports, here's what a tool
for counting lines of code reports on Android-specific files:

  $ cloc android*.c textconv.c ../java ../exec/*.ac ../exec/*.s \
    ../exec/*.c ../m4/ndk-build.m4 ../lisp/term/android-win.el 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                               13           5111           3702          16679
Java                            37           2055           1712           6118
Assembly                         6             23             86           1150
m4                               2            131             40            846
Bourne Shell                     1             54             62            252
XML                             10             81            148            232
make                             1             60             84            187
Lisp                             1             42             43            152
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            71           7557           5877          25616
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and on MS Windows specific files:

  $ cloc w32*.c ../nt/* unexw32.c ../lisp/w32-*

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                               22           6601           8580          34443
C/C++ Header                    25            290            393           1072
Lisp                             2             70             90            371
make                             2             62            112            164
XML                              2              0             10             70
DOS Batch                        3              7             35             32
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            56           7030           9220          36152
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

as such, I don't think it's really fair to claim that the Android port
is significantly larger than the others.