Re: Android port of Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <arne_bab@web.de>
> Cc: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2023 17:16:16 +0200
> 
> Seeing how many people struggle to get working org-mode support on
> Android — the many attempts at mobile org — and that more and more
> people only know Android and will never own a regular computer, I think
> the Android port is a serious advantage.
> 
> We also do not need to support any proprietary platform with it, since
> releases can be served via F-Droid that only provides Free Software.
> 
> > An alternative would be for the Android support to be a separate
> > project on Savannah.  Maybe in the long run this would be better?
> 
> I think that this would risk becoming stale. I’d rather see a somewhat
> maintained port that moves slowly (but keeps working) than a separate
> project that moves quickly until it stops and then breaks due to some
> API change in Emacs which none of the Emacs developers spotted, because
> it only affected an external project.
> 
> From my experience the maintenance work created by a big external
> project is larger than if the project is part of the tree, because with
> the external project compatibility problems are not detected by the
> usual tooling directly during development.
> 
> Closing thought: one of the largest advantages of learning to use Emacs
> instead of any other tool is that Emacs can follow you wherever you go.
> Whatever the platform you may (be forced to?) use in the future, Emacs
> will be there and your skills will be an advantage. The android port
> closes a significant gap for this. I’ve seen several people move their
> workflows to proprietary web applications because “then I can use it on
> the tablet”. Emacs on Android can provide a viable alternative to that.

Thanks, but what you say gives the POV of an Android user, not the POV
of the Emacs maintenance.  I have no doubt whatsoever that having
Emacs on Android will benefit Android users; my doubts are whether we
as the project should and can take upon ourselves this additional
maintenance burden, and promise the Android users that we will
maintain, let alone develop, this port for the years to come.