IIUC, the problem that triggered the change from EMACS=t to
EMACS=/where/is/emacs was that some configure scripts (unrelated
to Emacs) assumed that the environment variable EMACS -- if set --
contains the full directory file name of the Emacs executable.
I think that these configure scripts are following a general
convention for configuration files. The convention is not stated
explicitly, but it is implicit in this part of standards.texi:
Specifying variables as arguments to @code{configure}, like this:
@example
./configure CC=gcc
@end example
is preferable to setting them in environment variables:
@example
CC=gcc ./configure
@end example
as it helps to recreate the same configuration later with
@file{config.status}.
@end table
We cannot criticize them for using EMACS to specify where to find
Emacs after we suggested using CC to specify where to find cc.
So I think the only correct solution in the long term is to move to a
different variable (such as INSIDE_EMACS) to say "you're inside
Emacs". This means we should start setting the other envvar now.
There are two ways to do the transition: with EMACS=t or with
EMACS=<<file name>>. When we changed it to <<file name>>, we
thought that would be upward compatible. Since it is not,
it means that for the short term we have to choose between one
set of bugs and another.
I think we will have fewer bugs if we put EMACS back to t.
So let's set both EMACS and INSIDE_EMACS to t.
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