Re: Android port of Emacs

[Óscar Fuentes]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev> writes:
>
>> On the flip side, I suppose we should ask how many changes the Android
>> port requires in the shared code at all. Because if there were none,
>> maintaining the port in a separate repo, rebasing regularly (and
>> perhaps automatically), would be a cake walk too.
>
> The problem with this approach is that such a separate repository will
> essentially be a fork.  That will be much more difficult for me compared
> to keeping it in emacs.git, as it is now: if it does happen, I probably
> will have to stop working on one or the other.

Why keeping the Android port on its own *branch* prevents it from being
on emacs.git? How that prevents distributing source tarballs and
binaries targeting Android from the official GNU Emacs site?

Keeping the Android port on its own branch even could have advantages
from the maintenance POV. The monolithic source model is not always the
most effective one.

We can try doing an *official* release of Emacs 30 for Android based on
the branch and see what happens on terms of user acceptance and
developer load, so hopefully after some time the maintainers (and the
developer(s)!) have actual facts as a basis for their decisions.

Po Lu: I installed your apk on a tablet today. I'm truly impressed, for
sure the feat required many ours of research and quite a bit of
inventiveness.

That said, if my understanding is correct, the port suffers from a
serious limitation (imposed by Android, of course) in that the user
can't install binaries and use them from Emacs on the usual way. An
Emacs that can't invoke git, gcc... is of little use to me, although I'm
sure that many users will find the port extremely convenient (Org users,
for instance.) Emacs on Termux has no such limitation, but it has its
own problems, starting with a terrible user interface.

I completely believe you when you say that the port will be maintained.
I have more doubts about Android itself, specifically about its
increasing restrictions, making Emacs even more constrained with each OS
release.