Re: Emacs 26.1 on Windows is HUGE

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord)
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 16:28:54 +0100
> 
> > We didn't invent this for Windows, this is how Emacs installs itself
> > on all supported systems.  We just follow that on Windows, to be
> > consistent with all the other systems.
> 
> Yes, if you install them in the same location. But if you do the
> suggested thing of unpacking them with "extract" from the file explorer
> menu, each will get their own directory, so you will have
> emacs-26.1/bin/emacs.exe and emacs-26.2/bin/emacs.exe.

The Explorer lets you control the root directory where you extract the
files.  What you say above is only the default, if the user doesn't
change what Explorer suggests.

> How many people unpack one Emacs version over another? There isn't any
> real advantage to doing so, unless you want to share files between the
> two versions.

If you want to make the second binary optional, or remove it tell
people who want to keep the old version what do, it's entirely up to
you.  Since you are producing the binaries, you get to decide on these
details (and also to handle the complaints ;-).

I wrote the above to explain that this arrangement is not something
invented for Windows, it's how Emacs installs itself on all
platforms.