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1 GNU Emacs Installation Guide
2 Copyright (C) 1992, 1994, 1996-1997, 2000-2016 Free Software Foundation,
3 Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
7 This file contains general information on building GNU Emacs.
8 For more information specific to the MS-Windows, GNUstep/Mac OS X, and
9 MS-DOS ports, also read the files nt/INSTALL, nextstep/INSTALL, and
10 msdos/INSTALL. For information about building from a repository checkout
11 (rather than a release), also read the file INSTALL.REPO.
12
13
14 BASIC INSTALLATION
15
16 On most Unix systems, you build Emacs by first running the 'configure'
17 shell script. This attempts to deduce the correct values for
18 various system-dependent variables and features, and find the
19 directories where certain system headers and libraries are kept.
20 In a few cases, you may need to explicitly tell configure where to
21 find some things, or what options to use.
22
23 'configure' creates a 'Makefile' in several subdirectories, and a
24 'src/config.h' file containing system-dependent definitions.
25 Running the 'make' utility then builds the package for your system.
26
27 Building Emacs requires GNU make, <http://www.gnu.org/software/make/>.
28 On most systems that Emacs supports, this is the default 'make' program.
29
30 Here's the procedure to build Emacs using 'configure' on systems which
31 are supported by it. In some cases, if the simplified procedure fails,
32 you might need to use various non-default options, and maybe perform
33 some of the steps manually. The more detailed description in the other
34 sections of this guide will help you do that, so please refer to those
35 sections if you need to.
36
37 1. Unpacking the Emacs 24 release requires about 200 MB of free
38 disk space. Building Emacs uses about another 200 MB of space.
39 The final installed Emacs uses about 150 MB of disk space.
40 This includes the space-saving that comes from automatically
41 compressing the Lisp source files on installation.
42
43 2a. 'cd' to the directory where you unpacked Emacs and invoke the
44 'configure' script:
45
46 ./configure
47
48 2b. Alternatively, create a separate directory, outside the source
49 directory, where you want to build Emacs, and invoke 'configure'
50 from there:
51
52 SOURCE-DIR/configure
53
54 where SOURCE-DIR is the top-level Emacs source directory.
55
56 3. When 'configure' finishes, it prints several lines of details
57 about the system configuration. Read those details carefully
58 looking for anything suspicious, such as wrong CPU and operating
59 system names, wrong places for headers or libraries, missing
60 libraries that you know are installed on your system, etc.
61
62 If you find anything wrong, you may have to pass to 'configure'
63 one or more options specifying the explicit machine configuration
64 name, where to find various headers and libraries, etc.
65 Refer to the section DETAILED BUILDING AND INSTALLATION below.
66
67 If 'configure' didn't find some image support libraries, such as
68 Xpm and jpeg, refer to "Image support libraries" below.
69
70 If the details printed by 'configure' don't make any sense to
71 you, but there are no obvious errors, assume that 'configure' did
72 its job and proceed.
73
74 4. Invoke the 'make' program:
75
76 make
77
78 5. If 'make' succeeds, it will build an executable program 'emacs'
79 in the 'src' directory. You can try this program, to make sure
80 it works:
81
82 src/emacs -Q
83
84 6. Assuming that the program 'src/emacs' starts and displays its
85 opening screen, you can install the program and its auxiliary
86 files into their installation directories:
87
88 make install
89
90 You are now ready to use Emacs. If you wish to conserve disk space,
91 you may remove the program binaries and object files from the
92 directory where you built Emacs:
93
94 make clean
95
96 You can delete the entire build directory if you do not plan to
97 build Emacs again, but it can be useful to keep for debugging.
98 If you want to build Emacs again with different configure options,
99 first clean the source directories:
100
101 make distclean
102
103 Note that the install automatically saves space by compressing
104 (provided you have the 'gzip' program) those installed Lisp source (.el)
105 files that have corresponding .elc versions, as well as the Info files.
106
107
108 ADDITIONAL DISTRIBUTION FILES
109
110 * Complex Text Layout support libraries
111
112 On GNU and Unix systems, Emacs needs the optional libraries "m17n-db",
113 "libm17n-flt", "libotf" to correctly display such complex scripts as
114 Indic and Khmer, and also for scripts that require Arabic shaping
115 support (Arabic and Farsi). On some systems, particularly GNU/Linux,
116 these libraries may be already present or available as additional
117 packages. Note that if there is a separate 'dev' or 'devel' package,
118 for use at compilation time rather than run time, you will need that
119 as well as the corresponding run time package; typically the dev
120 package will contain header files and a library archive. Otherwise,
121 you can download the libraries from <http://www.nongnu.org/m17n/>.
122
123 Note that Emacs cannot support complex scripts on a TTY, unless the
124 terminal includes such a support.
125
126 * intlfonts-VERSION.tar.gz
127
128 The intlfonts distribution contains X11 fonts in various encodings
129 that Emacs can use to display international characters. If you see a
130 non-ASCII character appear as a hollow box, that means you don't have
131 a font for it. You might find one in the intlfonts distribution. If
132 you do have a font for a non-ASCII character, but some characters
133 don't look right, or appear improperly aligned, a font from the
134 intlfonts distribution might look better.
135
136 The fonts in the intlfonts distribution are also used by the ps-print
137 package for printing international characters. The file
138 lisp/ps-mule.el defines the *.bdf font files required for printing
139 each character set.
140
141 The intlfonts distribution contains its own installation instructions,
142 in the intlfonts/README file.
143
144 * Image support libraries
145
146 Emacs needs libraries to display images, with the exception of PBM and
147 XBM images whose support is built-in.
148
149 On some systems, particularly on GNU/Linux, these libraries may
150 already be present or available as additional packages. If
151 there is a separate 'dev' or 'devel' package, for use at compilation
152 time rather than run time, you will need that as well as the
153 corresponding run time package; typically the dev package will
154 contain header files and a library archive. Otherwise, you can
155 download and build libraries from sources. Although none of them are
156 essential for running Emacs, some are important enough that
157 'configure' will report an error if they are absent from a system that
158 has X11 support, unless 'configure' is specifically told to omit them.
159
160 Here's a list of some of these libraries, and the URLs where they
161 can be found (in the unlikely event that your distribution does not
162 provide them). By default, libraries marked with an X are required if
163 X11 is being used.
164
165 libXaw3d http://directory.fsf.org/project/xaw3d/
166 X libxpm for XPM: http://www.x.org/releases/current/src/lib/
167 X libpng for PNG: http://www.libpng.org/
168 libz (for PNG): http://www.zlib.net/
169 X libjpeg for JPEG: http://www.ijg.org/
170 X libtiff for TIFF: http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
171 X libgif for GIF: http://sourceforge.net/projects/giflib/
172 librsvg2 for SVG: http://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Projects/LibRsvg
173
174 If you supply the appropriate --without-LIB option, 'configure' will
175 omit the corresponding library from Emacs, even if that makes for a
176 less-pleasant user interface. Otherwise, Emacs will configure itself
177 to build with these libraries if 'configure' finds them on your
178 system, and 'configure' will complain and exit if a library marked 'X'
179 is not found on a system that uses X11. Use --without-LIB if your
180 version of a library won't work because some routines are missing.
181
182 * Extra fonts
183
184 The Emacs distribution does not include fonts and does not install
185 them.
186
187 On the GNU system, Emacs supports both X fonts and local fonts
188 (i.e. fonts managed by the fontconfig library). If you need more
189 fonts than your distribution normally provides, you must install them
190 yourself. See <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/> for a large
191 number of free Unicode fonts.
192
193 * GNU/Linux development packages
194
195 Many GNU/Linux systems do not come with development packages by default;
196 they include the files that you need to run Emacs, but not those you
197 need to compile it. For example, to compile Emacs with support for X
198 and graphics libraries, you may need to install the X development
199 package(s), and development versions of the jpeg, png, etc. packages.
200
201 The names of the packages that you need varies according to the
202 GNU/Linux distribution that you use, and the options that you want to
203 configure Emacs with. On Debian-based systems, you can install all the
204 packages needed to build the installed version of Emacs with a command
205 like 'apt-get build-dep emacs24'. On Red Hat systems, the
206 corresponding command is 'yum-builddep emacs'.
207
208
209 DETAILED BUILDING AND INSTALLATION:
210
211 (This is for a Unix or Unix-like system. For GNUstep and Mac OS X,
212 see nextstep/INSTALL. For non-ancient versions of MS Windows, see
213 the file nt/INSTALL. For MS-DOS and MS Windows 3.X, see msdos/INSTALL.)
214
215 1) See the basic installation summary above for the disk space requirements.
216
217 2) In the unlikely event that 'configure' does not detect your system
218 type correctly, consult './etc/MACHINES' to see what --host, --build
219 options you should pass to 'configure'. That file also offers hints
220 for getting around some possible installation problems.
221
222 3) You can build Emacs in the top-level Emacs source directory
223 or in a separate directory.
224
225 3a) To build in the top-level Emacs source directory, go to that
226 directory and run the program 'configure' as follows:
227
228 ./configure [--OPTION[=VALUE]] ...
229
230 If 'configure' cannot determine your system type, try again
231 specifying the proper --build, --host options explicitly.
232
233 If you don't want X support, specify '--with-x=no'. If you omit this
234 option, 'configure' will try to figure out for itself whether your
235 system has X, and arrange to use it if present.
236
237 The '--x-includes=DIR' and '--x-libraries=DIR' options tell the build
238 process where the compiler should look for the include files and
239 object libraries used with the X Window System. Normally, 'configure'
240 is able to find them; these options are necessary if you have your X
241 Window System files installed in unusual places. These options also
242 accept a list of directories, separated with colons.
243
244 To get more attractive menus, you can specify an X toolkit when you
245 configure Emacs; use the option '--with-x-toolkit=TOOLKIT', where
246 TOOLKIT is 'gtk' (the default), 'athena', or 'motif' ('yes' and
247 'lucid' are synonyms for 'athena'). Compiling with Motif causes a
248 standard File Selection Dialog to pop up when you invoke file commands
249 with the mouse. You can get fancy 3D-style scroll bars, even without
250 Gtk or Motif, if you have the Xaw3d library installed (see
251 "Image support libraries" above for Xaw3d availability).
252
253 You can tell configure where to search for GTK by giving it the
254 argument PKG_CONFIG='/full/name/of/pkg-config'.
255
256 Emacs will autolaunch a D-Bus session bus, when the environment
257 variable DISPLAY is set, but no session bus is running. This might be
258 inconvenient for Emacs when running as daemon or running via a remote
259 ssh connection. In order to completely prevent the use of D-Bus, configure
260 Emacs with the options '--without-dbus --without-gconf --without-gsettings'.
261
262 The Emacs mail reader RMAIL is configured to be able to read mail from
263 a POP3 server by default. Versions of the POP protocol older than
264 POP3 are not supported. For Kerberos-authenticated POP add
265 '--with-kerberos', for Hesiod support add '--with-hesiod'. While POP3
266 is always enabled, whether Emacs actually uses POP is controlled by
267 individual users--see the Rmail chapter of the Emacs manual.
268
269 For image support you may have to download, build, and install the
270 appropriate image support libraries for image types other than XBM and
271 PBM, see the list of URLs in "Image support libraries" above.
272 (Note that PNG support requires libz in addition to libpng.)
273
274 To disable individual types of image support in Emacs for some reason,
275 even though configure finds the libraries, you can configure with one
276 or more of these options:
277
278 --without-xpm for XPM image support
279 --without-jpeg for JPEG image support
280 --without-tiff for TIFF image support
281 --without-gif for GIF image support
282 --without-png for PNG image support
283 --without-rsvg for SVG image support
284 --without-imagemagick for Imagemagick support
285
286 Use --without-toolkit-scroll-bars to disable Motif or Xaw3d scroll bars.
287
288 Use --without-xim to inhibit the default use of X Input Methods.
289 In this case, the X resource useXIM can be used to turn on use of XIM.
290
291 Use --disable-largefile to omit support for files larger than 2GB on
292 systems which support that.
293
294 Use --without-sound to disable sound support.
295
296 Use --without-all for a smaller executable with fewer dependencies on
297 external libraries, at the cost of disabling many features. Although
298 --without-all disables libraries not needed for ordinary Emacs
299 operation, it does enable X support, and using the GTK2 or GTK3
300 toolkit creates a lot of library dependencies. So if you want to
301 build a small executable with very basic X support, use --without-all
302 --with-x-toolkit=no. For the smallest possible executable without X,
303 use --without-all --without-x. If you want to build with just a few
304 features enabled, you can combine --without-all with --with-FEATURE.
305 For example, you can use --without-all --without-x --with-dbus to
306 build with DBus support and nothing more.
307
308 Use --with-wide-int to implement Emacs values with the type 'long long',
309 even on hosts where a narrower type would do. With this option, on a
310 typical 32-bit host, Emacs integers have 62 bits instead of 30.
311
312 Use --with-cairo to compile Emacs with Cairo drawing.
313
314 Use --with-modules to build Emacs with support for loading dynamic
315 modules.
316
317 Use --enable-gcc-warnings to enable compile-time checks that warn
318 about possibly-questionable C code. This is intended for developers
319 and is useful with GNU-compatible compilers. On a recent GNU system
320 there should be no warnings; on older and on non-GNU systems the
321 generated warnings may still be useful, though you may prefer
322 configuring with --enable-gcc-warnings=warn-only so they are not
323 treated as errors. The default is --enable-gcc-warnings=warn-only if
324 it appears to be a developer build, and is --disable-gcc-warnings
325 otherwise.
326
327 Use --disable-silent-rules to cause 'make' to give more details about
328 the commands it executes. This can be helpful when debugging a build
329 that goes awry. 'make V=1' also enables the extra chatter.
330
331 Use --enable-link-time-optimization to enable link-time optimizer. If
332 you're using GNU compiler, this feature is supported since version 4.5.0.
333 If 'configure' can determine number of online CPUS on your system, final
334 link-time optimization and code generation is executed in parallel using
335 one job per each available online CPU.
336
337 This option is also supported for clang. You should have GNU binutils
338 with 'gold' linker and plugin support, and clang with LLVMgold.so plugin.
339 Read http://llvm.org/docs/GoldPlugin.html for details. Also note that
340 this feature is still experimental, so prepare to build binutils and
341 clang from the corresponding source code repositories.
342
343 The '--prefix=PREFIXDIR' option specifies where the installation process
344 should put emacs and its data files. This defaults to '/usr/local'.
345 - Emacs (and the other utilities users run) go in PREFIXDIR/bin
346 (unless the '--exec-prefix' option says otherwise).
347 - The architecture-independent files go in PREFIXDIR/share/emacs/VERSION
348 (where VERSION is the version number of Emacs, like '23.2').
349 - The architecture-dependent files go in
350 PREFIXDIR/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION
351 (where CONFIGURATION is the configuration name, like
352 i686-pc-linux-gnu), unless the '--exec-prefix' option says otherwise.
353
354 The '--exec-prefix=EXECDIR' option allows you to specify a separate
355 portion of the directory tree for installing architecture-specific
356 files, like executables and utility programs. If specified,
357 - Emacs (and the other utilities users run) go in EXECDIR/bin, and
358 - The architecture-dependent files go in
359 EXECDIR/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION.
360 EXECDIR/bin should be a directory that is normally in users' PATHs.
361
362 For example, the command
363
364 ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu --without-sound
365
366 configures Emacs to build for a 32-bit GNU/Linux distribution,
367 without sound support.
368
369 'configure' doesn't do any compilation or installation itself.
370 It just creates the files that influence those things:
371 './Makefile' in the top-level directory and several subdirectories;
372 and './src/config.h'.
373
374 When it is done, 'configure' prints a description of what it did and
375 creates a shell script 'config.status' which, when run, recreates the
376 same configuration. If 'configure' exits with an error after
377 disturbing the status quo, it removes 'config.status'. 'configure'
378 also creates a file 'config.cache' that saves the results of its tests
379 to make reconfiguring faster, and a file 'config.log' containing compiler
380 output (useful mainly for debugging 'configure'). You can give
381 'configure' the option '--cache-file=FILE' to use the results of the
382 tests in FILE instead of 'config.cache'. Set FILE to '/dev/null' to
383 disable caching, for debugging 'configure'.
384
385 If the description of the system configuration printed by 'configure'
386 is not right, or if it claims some of the features or libraries are not
387 available when you know they are, look at the 'config.log' file for
388 the trace of the failed tests performed by 'configure' to check
389 whether these features are supported. Typically, some test fails
390 because the compiler cannot find some function in the system
391 libraries, or some macro-processor definition in the system headers.
392
393 Some tests might fail because the compiler should look in special
394 directories for some header files, or link against optional
395 libraries, or use special compilation options. You can force
396 'configure' and the build process which follows it to do that by
397 setting the variables CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, LIBS, CPP and CC
398 before running 'configure'. CPP is the command which invokes the
399 preprocessor, CPPFLAGS lists the options passed to it, CFLAGS are
400 compilation options, LDFLAGS are options used when linking, LIBS are
401 libraries to link against, and CC is the command which invokes the
402 compiler. By default, gcc is used if available.
403
404 Here's an example of a 'configure' invocation, assuming a Bourne-like
405 shell such as Bash, which uses these variables:
406
407 ./configure \
408 CPPFLAGS='-I/foo/myinclude' LDFLAGS='-L/bar/mylib' \
409 CFLAGS='-O3' LIBS='-lfoo -lbar'
410
411 (this is all one shell command). This tells 'configure' to instruct the
412 preprocessor to look in the '/foo/myinclude' directory for header
413 files (in addition to the standard directories), instruct the linker
414 to look in '/bar/mylib' for libraries, pass the -O3 optimization
415 switch to the compiler, and link against libfoo and libbar
416 libraries in addition to the standard ones.
417
418 For some libraries, like Gtk+, fontconfig and ALSA, 'configure' uses
419 pkg-config to find where those libraries are installed.
420 If you want pkg-config to look in special directories, you have to set
421 PKG_CONFIG_PATH to point to the directories where the .pc-files for
422 those libraries are. For example:
423
424 ./configure \
425 PKG_CONFIG_PATH='/usr/local/alsa/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/gtk+-2.8/lib/pkgconfig'
426
427 3b) To build in a separate directory, go to that directory
428 and run the program 'configure' as follows:
429
430 SOURCE-DIR/configure CONFIGURATION-NAME [--OPTION[=VALUE]] ...
431
432 SOURCE-DIR refers to the top-level Emacs source directory which is
433 where Emacs's configure script is located. 'configure' looks for the
434 Emacs source code in the directory that 'configure' is in.
435
436 4) Put into './lisp/site-init.el' or './lisp/site-load.el' any Emacs
437 Lisp code you want Emacs to load before it is dumped out. Use
438 site-load.el for additional libraries if you arrange for their
439 documentation strings to be in the etc/DOC file (see
440 src/Makefile.in if you wish to figure out how to do that). For all
441 else, use site-init.el. Do not load byte-compiled code which
442 was built with a non-nil value of 'byte-compile-dynamic'.
443
444 It is not a good idea to edit the normal .el files that come with Emacs.
445 Instead, use a file like site-init.el to change settings.
446
447 To change the value of a variable that is already defined in Emacs,
448 you should use the Lisp function 'setq', not 'defvar'. For example,
449
450 (setq news-inews-program "/usr/bin/inews")
451
452 is how you would override the default value of the variable
453 news-inews-program.
454
455 Before you override a variable this way, *look at the value* that the
456 variable gets by default! Make sure you know what kind of value the
457 variable should have. If you don't pay attention to what you are
458 doing, you'll make a mistake.
459
460 The 'site-*.el' files are nonexistent in the distribution. You do not
461 need to create them if you have nothing to put in them.
462
463 5) Refer to the file './etc/TERMS' for information on fields you may
464 wish to add to various termcap entries. (This is unlikely to be necessary.)
465
466 6) Run 'make' in the top directory of the Emacs distribution to finish
467 building Emacs in the standard way. The final executable file is
468 named 'src/emacs'. You can execute this file "in place" without
469 copying it, if you wish; then it automatically uses the sibling
470 directories ../lisp, ../lib-src, ../info.
471
472 Or you can "install" the executable and the other files into their
473 installed locations, with 'make install'. By default, Emacs's files
474 are installed in the following directories:
475
476 '/usr/local/bin' holds the executable programs users normally run -
477 'emacs', 'etags', 'ctags', 'emacsclient'.
478
479 '/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/lisp' holds the Emacs Lisp library;
480 'VERSION' stands for the number of the Emacs version
481 you are installing, like '23.1' or '23.2'. Since the
482 Lisp library changes from one version of Emacs to
483 another, including the version number in the path
484 allows you to have several versions of Emacs installed
485 at the same time; in particular, you don't have to
486 make Emacs unavailable while installing a new version.
487
488 '/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/etc' holds the Emacs tutorial, the DOC
489 file, and other architecture-independent files Emacs
490 might need while running.
491
492 '/usr/local/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION-NAME' contains executable
493 programs used by Emacs that users are not expected to
494 run themselves.
495 'VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are
496 installing, and 'CONFIGURATION-NAME' is the value
497 deduced by the 'configure' program to identify the
498 architecture and operating system of your machine,
499 like 'i686-pc-linux-gnu' or 'sparc-sun-sunos'. Since
500 these files are specific to the version of Emacs,
501 operating system, and architecture in use, including
502 the configuration name in the path allows you to have
503 several versions of Emacs for any mix of machines and
504 operating systems installed at the same time; this is
505 useful for sites at which different kinds of machines
506 share the file system Emacs is installed on.
507
508 '/usr/local/share/info' holds the on-line documentation for Emacs,
509 known as "info files". Many other GNU programs are
510 documented using info files as well, so this directory
511 stands apart from the other, Emacs-specific directories.
512
513 '/usr/local/share/man/man1' holds the man pages for the programs installed
514 in '/usr/local/bin'.
515
516 Any version of Emacs, whether installed or not, also looks for Lisp
517 files in these directories.
518
519 '/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp' holds the local Emacs Lisp
520 files installed for Emacs version VERSION only.
521
522 '/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp' holds the local Emacs Lisp
523 files installed for all Emacs versions.
524
525 When Emacs is installed, it searches for its Lisp files
526 in '/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp', then in
527 '/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp', and finally in
528 '/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/lisp'.
529
530 If these directories are not what you want, you can specify where to
531 install Emacs's libraries and data files or where Emacs should search
532 for its Lisp files by giving values for 'make' variables as part of
533 the command. See the section below called 'MAKE VARIABLES' for more
534 information on this.
535
536 7) Check the file 'dir' in your site's info directory (usually
537 /usr/local/share/info) to make sure that it has a menu entry for the
538 Emacs info files.
539
540 8) If your system uses lock files to interlock access to mailer inbox files,
541 then you might need to make the movemail program setuid or setgid
542 to enable it to write the lock files. We believe this is safe.
543
544 9) You are done! You can remove executables and object files from
545 the build directory by typing 'make clean'. To also remove the files
546 that 'configure' created (so you can compile Emacs for a different
547 configuration), type 'make distclean'.
548
549
550 MAKE VARIABLES
551
552 You can change where the build process installs Emacs and its data
553 files by specifying values for 'make' variables as part of the 'make'
554 command line. For example, if you type
555
556 make install bindir=/usr/local/gnubin
557
558 the 'bindir=/usr/local/gnubin' argument indicates that the Emacs
559 executable files should go in '/usr/local/gnubin', not
560 '/usr/local/bin'.
561
562 Here is a complete list of the variables you may want to set.
563
564 'bindir' indicates where to put executable programs that users can
565 run. This defaults to /usr/local/bin.
566
567 'datadir' indicates where to put the architecture-independent
568 read-only data files that Emacs refers to while it runs; it
569 defaults to /usr/local/share. We create the following
570 subdirectories under 'datadir':
571 - 'emacs/VERSION/lisp', containing the Emacs Lisp library, and
572 - 'emacs/VERSION/etc', containing the tutorials, DOC file, etc.
573 'VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are installing,
574 like '23.1' or '23.2'. Since these files vary from one version
575 of Emacs to another, including the version number in the path
576 allows you to have several versions of Emacs installed at the
577 same time; this means that you don't have to make Emacs
578 unavailable while installing a new version.
579
580 'libexecdir' indicates where to put architecture-specific data files that
581 Emacs refers to as it runs; it defaults to '/usr/local/libexec'.
582 We create the following subdirectories under 'libexecdir':
583 - 'emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION-NAME', containing executable
584 programs used by Emacs that users are not expected to run
585 themselves.
586 'VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are installing,
587 and 'CONFIGURATION-NAME' is the value deduced by the
588 'configure' program to identify the architecture and operating
589 system of your machine, like 'i686-pc-linux-gnu' or 'sparc-sun-sunos'.
590 Since these files are specific to the version of Emacs,
591 operating system, and architecture in use, including the
592 configuration name in the path allows you to have several
593 versions of Emacs for any mix of machines and operating
594 systems installed at the same time; this is useful for sites
595 at which different kinds of machines share the file system
596 Emacs is installed on.
597
598 'infodir' indicates where to put the info files distributed with
599 Emacs; it defaults to '/usr/local/share/info'.
600
601 'mandir' indicates where to put the man pages for Emacs and its
602 utilities (like 'etags'); it defaults to
603 '/usr/local/share/man/man1'.
604
605 'prefix' doesn't give a path for any specific part of Emacs; instead,
606 its value is used to determine the defaults for all the
607 architecture-independent path variables - 'datadir',
608 'sharedstatedir', 'infodir', and 'mandir'. Its default value is
609 '/usr/local'; the other variables add on 'lib' or 'man' to it
610 by default.
611
612 For example, suppose your site generally places GNU software
613 under '/usr/users/software/gnusoft' instead of '/usr/local'.
614 By including
615 'prefix=/usr/users/software/gnusoft'
616 in the arguments to 'make', you can instruct the build process
617 to place all of the Emacs data files in the appropriate
618 directories under that path.
619
620 'exec_prefix' serves the same purpose as 'prefix', but instead
621 determines the default values for the architecture-dependent
622 path variables - 'bindir' and 'libexecdir'.
623
624 The above variables serve analogous purposes in the makefiles for all
625 GNU software; the following variables are specific to Emacs.
626
627 'archlibdir' indicates where Emacs installs and expects the executable
628 files and other architecture-dependent data it uses while
629 running. Its default value, based on 'libexecdir' (which
630 see), is '/usr/local/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION-NAME'
631 (where VERSION and CONFIGURATION-NAME are as described above).
632
633 'GZIP_PROG' is the name of the executable that compresses installed info,
634 manual, and .el files. It defaults to gzip. Setting it to
635 the empty string suppresses compression.
636
637 Remember that you must specify any variable values you need each time
638 you run 'make' in the top directory. If you run 'make' once to build
639 emacs, test it, and then run 'make' again to install the files, you
640 must provide the same variable settings each time. To make the
641 settings persist, you can edit them into the 'Makefile' in the top
642 directory, but be aware that running the 'configure' program erases
643 'Makefile' and rebuilds it from 'Makefile.in'.
644
645 The path for finding Lisp files is specified in src/epaths.h,
646 a file which is generated by running configure. To change the path,
647 you can edit the definition of PATH_LOADSEARCH in that file
648 before you run 'make'.
649
650 The top-level Makefile stores the variable settings it used in the
651 Makefiles for the subdirectories, so you don't have to specify them
652 when running make in the subdirectories.
653
654
655 PROBLEMS
656
657 See the file './etc/PROBLEMS' for a list of various problems sometimes
658 encountered, and what to do about them.
659 \f
660 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
661
662 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
663 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
664 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
665 (at your option) any later version.
666
667 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
668 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
669 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
670 GNU General Public License for more details.
671
672 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
673 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.