Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end of the file for license conditions. Precompiled Distributions of Emacs for Windows Version 24.1 January 1, 2011 This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on Windows (versions before Windows 95 and NT4 are not supported). This port is a part of the standard GNU Emacs distribution from the Free Software Foundation; the precompiled distributions are provided here for convenience since the majority of Windows users are not accustomed to compiling programs themselves. Corresponding source can be found in the parent directory in emacs-24.1.tar.gz. If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't already): http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html * IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL. For instance, if you put the emacs-24.1-bin-i386.tar.gz file from this directory on an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-24.1.tar.gz). Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the old binaries. * Files in this directory + emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip Windows binaries of Emacs-24.1, with all lisp code and documentation included. Download this file if you want a single installation package, and are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have Emacs add icons to the Start Menu. If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to unpack the source distribution on top of this installation. + emacs-24.1-barebin-i386.zip Windows binaries of Emacs-24.1, without lisp code or documentation. Download this file if you already have the source distribution. Unpack this over the top of the source distribution. It contains the bin subdirectory and etc/DOC file. + libxpm-3.5.7-w32-src.zip Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.7 on Windows. Contains a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip and emacs-24.1-barebin-i386.zip. * Prerequisites for running Emacs on Windows 9X Using Emacs in GUI mode on Windows 95/98/Me requires the UNICOWS.DLL dynamic library, which provides MSLU, the Microsoft Unicode Layer for Windows 9X. You can freely download it from the Microsoft site. * Image support Emacs 24.1 contains support for images, however for most image formats supporting libraries are required. This distribution has been tested with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for Windows, and the libraries found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image formats are supported: PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for the black and white versions of the toolbar icons. XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll, libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll. PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.2 or later, which will be named libpng13d.dll, libpng13.dll, libpng12d.dll, libpng12.dll or libpng.dll. LibPNG requires zlib, which should come from the same source as you got libpng. JPEG: requires the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later, which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll. TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll or libtiff.dll. GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll. SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many sample images. * Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar file (*.tar.gz). Because Emacs is quite large and therefore difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking over the top of the source distribution. Formerly, we used the same .tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with .zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip files. * Distributions for non-x86 platforms Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand, and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you are willing to help port Emacs 24 to 64 bit versions of Windows, your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list. * Unpacking distributions Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU programs, for example: Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/ GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical program that is able to handle many archive formats. Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window. Decide on a directory in which to place Emacs. Move the distribution to that directory, and then unpack it as follows. If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags to extract the files from the tar file: % gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf - You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a broken pipe. These messages are harmless and you can ignore them. On Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed form, taking up less space on disk. Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and 98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one step: % djtarnt -x some.tar.gz You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless). Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org if you do not already have other tools to do this. % unzip some.zip The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org if you do not already have other tools to do this. % unzip some.zip Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should have the following subdirectories: bin etc info lisp site-lisp * Unpacking with other tools If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted: + Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will be unusable. Older versions of WinZip would enable this translation by default when unpacking .tar files. If you are using WinZip, disable it. (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.) + Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking and Emacs will not start. + Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser. Some proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser has this bug. + I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar corrupts the executables. Use the latest version from the gnuwin32 site or another port of tar instead. If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information below. * Compiling from source If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed directions. It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW support to compile the source. The port of GCC included in Cygwin is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble since some builds of GNU make aren't supported. * Further information If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing your favorite web browser to following the document (if you haven't already): http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information about the Windows port and related software packages. Note that as most of the information in that FAQ is for earlier versions, so some information may not be relevant to Emacs-24.1. In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the list, see this Web page: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.) To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as explained there. Another valuable source of information and help which should not be overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs. These are particuarly good for help with general issues which aren't specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use for seeking help are: gnu.emacs.help comp.emacs There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or updated Emacs packages on this group: gnu.emacs.sources Enjoy! Jason Rumney (jasonr@gnu.org) Most of this README was contributed by former maintainer Andrew Innes (andrewi@gnu.org) This file is part of GNU Emacs. GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNU Emacs. If not, see .