bug#43255: 28.0.50; feature/native-comp void-function subr-native-lambda-list

[Arthur Miller]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Andrea Corallo <akrl@sdf.org>
>> Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, 43255@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2020 19:24:17 +0000
>> 
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> > That's different.  GTK and Cairo have profound effects on how Emacs
>> > presents itself to the UI.  I don't think native compilation is
>> > similar, or maybe I'm missing something.  What exactly did you think
>> > will not be evident to the user, and why should it be evident?
>> 
>> No you are correct, it is essentially transparent to the user.
>> 
>> And this is why is not the first time that a user miss the fact that
>> Emacs was compiled with the native compiler or vice versa.  Therefore I
>> thought was maybe useful to give some visual feedback in the "*About GNU
>> Emacs*" buffer.
>
> Why is it important for the user to know about the native compiler?
> E.g., how is it different from the C compiler switches used to build
> Emacs?
Just as important as x86_64 or linux-gnu :-).

Currently when I press C-h C-a, I get this info (amongst other):

GNU Emacs 28.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.23, cairo 
version 1.17.3)
 of 2020-09-07

I think it would be handy if there was a bit more info on that page.
I would prefer x64-native GNU/Linux. Why is it less important to know
about non-gui features? For me who has turned off most of gui stuff, GTK
and Cairo versions are not really what I care about. I have them just to
get better font rendering, but now I can maybe compile without at least
Gtk? I mean I don't need to know that it is compiled for GNU/Linux; I
know I am running on a GNU/Linux OS, or that it is a 64-bit OS, yet info
is there.

In my case I would have seen that I didn't compile with native compiler
support even though I intended (since the configure script failed wihout
me noticing).

I also wouldn't mind more info about compiler switches used to build the
version as well as features/packages built-in. I don't know what is
essential more and I don't have any philosophical argument, more than it
is sometimes useful.