Re: Android port of Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: chad <yandros@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2023 17:19:05 -0400
> 
> Before discussing whether these tradeoffs are worth it or not, is anything 
> I've said above obviously
> wrong, under-informed, or out of date? 

It is not, AFAIU.  But it is also not relevant to the issue that
bothers me.

The macOS/NS code is already written, and likewise the w32 code.  It
took us many years to come up with that, but, incrementally, we did.
So arguing that those platforms nowadays have lots of LOC doesn't
help.  Moreover, the code specific to these two ports, by and large,
closely resembles the corresponding parts of X code (xfns.c, xterm.c),
with rather minimal deviations in the w32 case and more significant
deviations in the case of NS.  And even so, the w32 and NS ports are
already problematic: the former has basically a single
maintainer/developer (yours truly), the latter doesn't have even that.
The results are clear, if not for everyone: the w32 port falls behind
in features, and the NS port is basically already badly broken, having
unacceptable display problems on at least some modern systems.

So what bothers me is whether we as the project should take another
such port upon ourselves, instead of leaving it to others to develop
and maintain it outside of the upstream project.  Because if we take
it upon ourselves, I don't see any way of making sure the Android port
will not go the way of w32 and NS soon enough, maybe the moment we
land it.

Everything else brought up here is not relevant.  I understand very
well the tremendous advantages of having Emacs support yet another
widely-used platform, and not only for the users of that platform, but
also for Emacs itself.  So posting opinions about those aspects
doesn't contribute to the discussion I'd like to have here, and
doesn't advance us as the project to making the decision, from my POV.