GNU Emacs Installation Guide
-Copyright (c) 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997 Free software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (c) 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006
+Free software Foundation, Inc.
+See the end of the file for copying permissions.
- Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
- of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
- copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
- and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
- for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
- Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
- of this document, or of portions of it,
- under the above conditions, provided also that they
- carry prominent notices stating who last changed them,
- and that any new or changed statements about the activities
- of the Free Software Foundation are approved by the Foundation.
+BASIC INSTALLATION
+The simplest way to build Emacs is to use the `configure' shell script
+which attempts to guess correct values for various system-dependent
+variables and features and find the directories where various system
+headers and libraries are kept. It then creates a `Makefile' in each
+subdirectory and a `config.h' file containing system-dependent
+definitions. Running the `make' utility then builds the package for
+your system.
-ADDITIONAL DISTRIBUTION FILES
+Here's the procedure to build Emacs using `configure' on systems which
+are supported by it. If this simplified procedure fails, or if you
+are using a platform such as MS-Windows, where `configure' script
+doesn't work, you might need to use various non-default options, and
+maybe perform some of the steps manually. The more detailed
+description in the rest of the sections of this guide will help you do
+that, so please refer to them if the simple procedure does not work.
+
+ 1. Make sure your system has at least 120 MB of free disk space.
+
+ 2a. `cd' to the directory where you unpacked Emacs and invoke the
+ `configure' script:
+
+ ./configure
+
+ 2b. Alternatively, create a separate directory, outside the source
+ directory, where you want to build Emacs, and invoke `configure'
+ from there:
+
+ SOURCE-DIR/configure
+
+ where SOURCE-DIR is the top-level Emacs source directory. This
+ may not work unless you use GNU make.
+
+ 3. When `configure' finishes, it prints several lines of details
+ about the system configuration. Read those details carefully
+ looking for anything suspicious, such as wrong CPU and operating
+ system names, wrong places for headers or libraries, missing
+ libraries that you know are installed on your system, etc.
+
+ If you find anything wrong, you will have to pass to `configure'
+ explicit machine configuration name, and one or more options
+ which tell it where to find various headers and libraries; refer
+ to DETAILED BUILDING AND INSTALLATION section below.
+
+ If `configure' didn't find some image support libraries, such as
+ Xpm, jpeg, etc., and you want to use them refer to the subsection
+ "Image support libraries", below.
+
+ If the details printed by `configure' don't make any sense to
+ you, assume that `configure' did its job and proceed.
-* leim-M.N.tar.gz
+ 4. If you need to run the `configure' script more than once (e.g.,
+ with some non-default options), always clean the source
+ directories before running `configure' again:
-The Emacs Lisp code for input methods for various international
-character scripts is distributed in a separate tar file because it
-amounts to a significant fraction of the size of the distribution.
-This tar file is called leim-M.N.tar.gz, with the same version number
-as Emacs, and it unpacks into the directory emacs-M.N/leim.
+ make distclean
+ ./configure
-You should unpack leim-M.N.tar.gz into the same directory where you
-have previously unpacked the main Emacs distribution. It fills in the
-contents of one subdirectory, which is present in the main Emacs
-distribution only in dummy form.
+ 5. Invoke the `make' program:
-Once you have unpacked the Leim tar file into the Emacs source tree,
-building and installing Emacs automatically installs the input method
-support as well. If you have built Emacs without unpacking Leim
-first, just unpack Leim, build Emacs again, and install it again.
+ make
+
+ 6. If `make' succeeds, it will build an executable program `emacs'
+ in the `src' directory. You can try this program, to make sure
+ it works:
+
+ src/emacs -q
+
+ 7. Assuming that the program `src/emacs' starts and displays its
+ opening screen, you can install the program and its auxiliary
+ files into their installation directories:
+
+ make install
+
+ You are now ready to use Emacs. If you wish to conserve disk space,
+ you may remove the program binaries and object files from the
+ directory where you built Emacs:
+
+ make clean
+
+ You can also save some space by compressing (with `gzip') Info files
+ and installed Lisp source (.el) files which have corresponding .elc
+ versions.
+
+
+ADDITIONAL DISTRIBUTION FILES
* intlfonts-VERSION.tar.gz
-The intlfonts distribution contains X11 fonts that Emacs needs in
-order to display international characters. If you see a non-ASCII
-character appear as a hollow box, that means you don't have a font for
-it. You might find a font in the intlfonts distribution. If some
-characters don't look right, or appear improperly aligned, a font
-from the intlfonts distribution might look better.
+The intlfonts distribution contains X11 fonts in various encodings
+that Emacs can use to display international characters. If you see a
+non-ASCII character appear as a hollow box, that means you don't have
+a font for it. You might find one in the intlfonts distribution. If
+you do have a font for a non-ASCII character, but some characters
+don't look right, or appear improperly aligned, a font from the
+intlfonts distribution might look better.
The fonts in the intlfonts distribution are also used by the ps-print
package for printing international characters. The file
-lisp/ps-mule.el defines the .bdf font files required for printing
+lisp/ps-mule.el defines the *.bdf font files required for printing
each character set.
The intlfonts distribution contains its own installation instructions,
in the intlfonts/README file.
-* elisp-manual-EMACSVERSION-MANVERSION.tar.gz
-
-This is the Emacs Lisp Reference for programmers, containing an
-in-depth discussion of Emacs Lisp and Emacs internals. The
-distribution contains the Texinfo source files for the Reference
-Manual. The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is quite large. It contains
-around 900 pages in smallbook format; the info files total almost two
-megabytes. The package contains installation instructions of its own.
-
-
-BUILDING AND INSTALLATION:
-
-(This is for a Unix or Unix-like system. For MSDOS, see below; search
-for MSDOG. For Windows NT or Windows 95, see the file nt/INSTALL.)
+* Image support libraries
+
+Emacs needs optional libraries to be able to display images (with the
+exception of PBM and XBM images whose support is built-in).
+
+On some systems, particularly on GNU/Linux, these libraries may
+already be present or available as additional packages. Note that if
+there is a separate `dev' or `devel' package, for use at compilation
+time rather than run time, you will need that as well as the
+corresponding run time package; typically the dev package will
+contain header files and a library archive. Otherwise, you can
+download and build libraries from sources. None of them are vital for
+running Emacs; however, note that Emacs will not be able to use
+colored icons in the toolbar if XPM support is not compiled in.
+
+Here's the list of these optional libraries, and the URLs where they
+can be found:
+
+ . libXaw3d for fancy 3D-style
+ scroll bars: ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/widgets/Xaw3d/
+ . libxpm for XPM: ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/libraries/
+ Get version 3.4k or later, which lets Emacs
+ use its own color allocation functions.
+ . libpng for PNG: ftp://ftp.simplesystems.org/pub/libpng/png/
+ . libz (for PNG): http://www.zlib.net/
+ . libjpeg for JPEG: ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/
+ Get version 6b -- 6a is reported to fail in
+ Emacs.
+ . libtiff for TIFF: http://www.libtiff.org/
+ . libungif for GIF:
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/libungif
+ Ensure you get version 4.1.0b1 or higher of libungif -- a bug in
+ 4.1.0 can crash Emacs.
+
+Emacs will configure itself to build with these libraries if the
+`configure' script finds them on your system, unless you supply the
+appropriate --without-LIB option. In some cases, older versions of
+these libraries won't work because some routines are missing, and
+configure should avoid such old versions. If that happens, use the
+--without-LIB options to `configure'. See below for more details.
+
+* Extra fonts
+
+At first, Emacs does not include fonts and does not install them. You
+must do this yourself.
+
+To take proper advantage of Emacs 21's mule-unicode charsets, you need
+a suitable font. For `Unicode' (ISO 10646) fonts for X, see
+<URL:http://czyborra.com/unifont/> (packaged in Debian),
+<URL:http://openlab.ring.gr.jp/efont/> (packaged in Debian). (In
+recent Debian versions, there is an extensive `misc-fixed' iso10646-1
+in the default X installation.) Perhaps also see
+<URL:http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emgk25/ucs-fonts.html>.
+
+<URL:http://czyborra.com/charsets/> has basic fonts for Emacs's
+ISO-8859 charsets.
+
+XFree86 release 4 (from <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/> and mirrors)
+contains font support for most, if not all, of the charsets that Emacs
+currently supports, including iso10646-1 encoded fonts for use with
+the mule-unicode charsets. The font files should also be usable with
+older X releases. Note that XFree 4 contains many iso10646-1 fonts
+with minimal character repertoires, which can cause problems -- see
+etc/PROBLEMS.
+
+BDF fonts etl-unicode.tar.gz used by ps-print and ps-mule to print
+Unicode characters are available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/>
+and <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>.
+
+* GNU/Linux development packages
+
+Many GNU/Linux systems do not come with development packages by
+default; they just include the files that you need to run Emacs, but
+not those you need to compile it. For example, to compile Emacs with
+X11 support, you may need to install the special `X11 development'
+package. For example, in April 2003, the package names to install
+were `XFree86-devel' and `Xaw3d-devel' on RedHat. On Debian, the
+packages necessary to build the installed version should be
+sufficient; they can be installed using `apt-get build-dep emacs21' in
+Debian 3 and above.
+
+
+DETAILED BUILDING AND INSTALLATION:
+
+(This is for a Unix or Unix-like system. For MS-DOS and Windows 3.X,
+see below; search for MSDOG. For Windows 9X, Windows ME, Windows NT,
+and Windows 2000, see the file nt/INSTALL. For the Mac, see the file
+mac/INSTALL.)
1) Make sure your system has enough swapping space allocated to handle
-a program whose pure code is 900k bytes and whose data area is at
-least 400k and can reach 8Mb or more. If the swapping space is
+a program whose pure code is 1.5 MB and whose data area is at
+least 2.8 MB and can reach 100 MB or more. If the swapping space is
insufficient, you will get an error in the command `temacs -batch -l
loadup dump', found in `./src/Makefile.in', or possibly when
running the final dumped Emacs.
-
-Building Emacs requires about 70 Mb of disk space (including the Emacs
-sources). Once installed, Emacs occupies about 35 Mb in the file
+
+Building Emacs requires about 140 MB of disk space (including the
+Emacs sources) Once installed, Emacs occupies about 77 MB in the file
system where it is installed; this includes the executable files, Lisp
libraries, miscellaneous data files, and on-line documentation. If
the building and installation take place in different directories,
-then the installation procedure momentarily requires 70+35 Mb.
+then the installation procedure momentarily requires 140+77 MB.
2) Consult `./etc/MACHINES' to see what configuration name you should
give to the `configure' program. That file offers hints for
-getting around some possible installation problems.
+getting around some possible installation problems. The file lists
+many different configurations, but only the part for your machine and
+operating system is relevant. (The list is arranged in alphabetical
+order by the vendor name.)
3) You can build Emacs in the top-level Emacs source directory
or in a separate directory.
To get more attractive menus, you can specify an X toolkit when you
configure Emacs; use the option `--with-x-toolkit=TOOLKIT', where
-TOOLKIT is `athena' or `motif' (`yes' and `lucid' are synonyms for
+TOOLKIT is `athena', `motif' or `gtk' (`yes' and `lucid' are synonyms for
`athena'). On some systems, it does not work to use a toolkit with
-shared libraries.
+shared libraries. A free implementation of Motif, called LessTif, is
+available ftom <http://www.lesstif.org>. Compiling with LessTif or
+Motif causes a standard File Selection Dialog to pop up when you type
+"C-x C-f" and similar commands. You can get fancy 3D-style scroll
+bars, even without LessTif/Motif, if you have the Xaw3d library
+installed (see "Image support libraries" above for Xaw3d
+availability).
+
+If `--with-x-toolkit=gtk' is specified, you can tell configure where
+to search for GTK by specifying `--with-pkg-config-prog=PATH' where
+PATH is the pathname to pkg-config. Note that GTK version 2.4 or
+newer is required for Emacs.
The `--with-gcc' option specifies that the build process should
compile Emacs using GCC. If you don't want to use GCC, specify
`--with-gcc=no'. If you omit this option, `configure' will search
for GCC in your path, and use it if present.
-If you want the Emacs mail reader RMAIL to read mail from a POP
-server, you must specify `--with-pop'. This provides support for the
-POP3 protocol; older versions are not supported. For
-Kerberos-authenticated POP add `--with-kerberos', for Hesiod support
-add `--with-hesiod'. These options enable Emacs to use POP; whether
-Emacs uses POP is controlled by individual users--see the Rmail
-chapter of the Emacs manual.
+The Emacs mail reader RMAIL is configured to be able to read mail from
+a POP3 server by default. Versions of the POP protocol older than
+POP3 are not supported. For Kerberos-authenticated POP add
+`--with-kerberos', for Hesiod support add `--with-hesiod'. While POP3
+is always enabled, whether Emacs actually uses POP is controlled by
+individual users--see the Rmail chapter of the Emacs manual.
+
+For image support you may have to download, build, and install the
+appropriate image support libraries for image types other than XBM and
+PBM, see the list of URLs in "ADDITIONAL DISTRIBUTION FILES" above.
+(Note that PNG support requires libz in addition to libpng.)
+
+To disable individual types of image support in Emacs for some reason,
+even though configure finds the libraries, you can configure with one
+or more of these options:
+
+ --without-xpm for XPM image support
+ --without-jpeg for JPEG image support
+ --without-tiff for TIFF image support
+ --without-gif for GIF image support
+ --without-png for PNG image support
+
+Use --without-toolkit-scroll-bars to disable LessTif/Motif or Xaw3d
+scroll bars.
+
+Use --without-xim to inhibit the default use of X Input Methods. In
+this case, the X resource useXIM can be used to turn on use of XIM.
+
+Use --disable-largefile omits support for files larger than 2GB on
+systems which support that.
+
+Use --without-sound to disable sound support.
The `--prefix=PREFIXDIR' option specifies where the installation process
should put emacs and its data files. This defaults to `/usr/local'.
tests in FILE instead of `config.cache'. Set FILE to `/dev/null' to
disable caching, for debugging `configure'.
+If the description of the system configuration printed by `configure'
+is not right, or if it claims some of the fatures or libraries are not
+available when you know they are, look at the `config.log' file for
+the trace of the failed tests performed by `configure' to check
+whether these features are supported. Typically, some test fails
+because the compiler cannot find some function in the system
+libraries, or some macro-processor definition in the system headers.
+
+Some tests might fail because the compiler should look in special
+directories for some header files, or link against optional
+libraries, or use special compilation options. You can force
+`configure' and the build process which follows it to do that by
+setting the variables CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, LIBS, and CC before
+running `configure'. CPPFLAGS lists the options passed to the
+preprocessor, CFLAGS are compilation options, LDFLAGS are options used
+when linking, LIBS are libraries to link against, and CC is the
+command which invokes the compiler.
+
+Here's an example of a `configure' invocation, assuming a Bourne-like
+shell such as Bash, which uses these variables:
+
+ CPPFLAGS='-I/foo/myinclude' LDFLAGS='-L/bar/mylib' \
+ CFLAGS='-O3' LIBS='-lfoo -lbar' ./configure
+
+(this is all one long line). This tells `configure' to instruct the
+preprocessor to look in the `/foo/myinclude' directory for header
+files (in addition to the standard directories), instruct the linker
+to look in `/bar/mylib' for libraries, pass the -O3 optimization
+switch to the compiler, and link against libfoo.a and libbar.a
+libraries in addition to the standard ones.
+
The work of `configure' can be done by editing various files in the
distribution, but using `configure' is easier. See the section called
"CONFIGURATION BY HAND" below if you want to do the configuration
at the same time; in particular, you don't have to
make Emacs unavailable while installing a new version.
-`/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp' holds the local Emacs Lisp
- files installed for Emacs version VERSION only.
-
-`/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp' holds the local Emacs Lisp
- files installed for all Emacs versions.
-
- When Emacs is installed, it searches for its Lisp files
- in `/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp', then in
- `/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp', and finally in
- `/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/lisp'.
-
`/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/etc' holds the Emacs tutorial, the DOC
file, the `yow' database, and other
architecture-independent files Emacs might need while
`/usr/local/man/man1' holds the man pages for the programs installed
in `/usr/local/bin'.
+Any version of Emacs, whether installed or not, also looks for Lisp
+files in these directories.
+
+`/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp' holds the local Emacs Lisp
+ files installed for Emacs version VERSION only.
+
+`/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp' holds the local Emacs Lisp
+ files installed for all Emacs versions.
+
+ When Emacs is installed, it searches for its Lisp files
+ in `/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp', then in
+ `/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp', and finally in
+ `/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/lisp'.
+
If these directories are not what you want, you can specify where to
install Emacs's libraries and data files or where Emacs should search
for its Lisp files by giving values for `make' variables as part of
10) You are done! You can remove executables and object files from
the build directory by typing `make clean'. To also remove the files
that `configure' created (so you can compile Emacs for a different
-configuration), type `make distclean'.
+configuration), type `make distclean'. If you don't need some, or all
+of the input methods from the Leim package, you can remove the
+unneeded files in the leim subdirectories of your site's lisp
+directory (usually /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/).
We create the following subdirectories under `libexecdir':
- `emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION-NAME', containing executable
programs used by Emacs that users are not expected to run
- themselves.
+ themselves.
`VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are installing,
and `CONFIGURATION-NAME' is the argument you gave to the
`configure' program to identify the architecture and operating
just a matter of substitution.
The `configure' script is built from `configure.in' by the `autoconf'
-program. You need version 2.0 or newer of `autoconf' to rebuild `configure'.
+program. You need version 2.51 or newer of `autoconf' to rebuild
+`configure'.
BUILDING GNU EMACS BY HAND
in `./lib-src' to their final destinations, as selected in `./src/paths.h'.
Strictly speaking, not all of the executables in `./lib-src' need be copied.
-- The programs `cvtmail', `emacsserver', `fakemail', `hexl',
+- The programs `cvtmail', `fakemail', `hexl',
`movemail', `profile', `rcs2log', `timer', `vcdiff', `wakeup',
and `yow' are used by Emacs; they do need to be copied.
- The programs `etags', `ctags', `emacsclient', `b2m', and `rcs-checkin'
(see below) will test for these utilities and will refuse to continue
if any of them isn't found.
+Recompiling Lisp files in the `lisp' subdirectory using the various
+targets in the lisp/Makefile file requires additional utilities:
+`find' and `xargs' (from Findutils), `touch' (from Fileutils) GNU
+`echo' and `test' (from Sh-utils), `tr, `sort', and `uniq' (from
+Textutils), and a port of Bash. However, you should not normally need
+to run lisp/Makefile, as all the Lisp files are distributed in
+byte-compiled form as well.
+
If you are building the MSDOG version of Emacs on an MSDOG-like system
which supports long file names (e.g. Windows 95), you need to make
sure that long file names are handled consistently both when you
It is important to understand that the runtime support of long file
names by the Emacs binary is NOT affected by the LFN setting during
compilation; Emacs compiled with DJGPP v2.0 or later will always
-support long file names on Windows 95 no matter what was the setting
+support long file names on Windows 9X no matter what was the setting
of LFN at compile time. However, if you compiled with LFN disabled
and want to enable LFN support after Emacs was already built, you need
to make sure that the support files in the lisp, etc and info
(This assumes that the Emacs distribution is called `emacs.tgz' on
your system.)
-If you need to type international characters, you will need to unpack
-the Leim distribution (see the description near the beginning of this
-file). You unpack it from the same directory where you unpacked
-Emacs. To unpack Leim with djtar, assuming the Leim distribution is
-called `leim.tgz', type this command:
-
- djtar -x leim.tgz
-
If you want to print international characters, install the intlfonts
distribution. For this, create a directory called `fonts' under the
Emacs top-level directory (usually called `emacs-XX.YY') created by
config msdos
make install
+Running "config msdos" checks for several programs that are required
+to configure and build Emacs; if one of those programs is not found,
+CONFIG.BAT stops and prints an error message. If you have DJGPP
+version 2.0 or 2.01, it will complain about a program called
+DJECHO.EXE. These old versions of DJGPP shipped that program under
+the name ECHO.EXE, so you can simply copy ECHO.EXE to DJECHO.EXE and
+rerun CONFIG.BAT. If you have neither ECHO.EXE nor DJECHO.EXE, you
+should be able to find them in your djdevNNN.zip archive (where NNN is
+the DJGPP version number).
+
+On Windows NT or Windows 2000, running "config msdos" might print an
+error message like "VDM has been already loaded". This is because
+those systems have a program called `redir.exe' which is incompatible
+with a program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
+config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
+the front of your PATH environment variable.
+
To install the international fonts, chdir to the intlfonts-X.Y
directory created when you unpacked the intlfonts distribution (X.Y is
the version number of the fonts' distribution), and type the following
/emacs/lib-src to the directory /emacs/bin, so you can then delete the
subdirectories /emacs/src and /emacs/lib-src if you wish. The only
subdirectories you need to keep are bin, lisp, etc and info. (If you
-installed Leim, keep the leim subdirectory, and if you installed
-intlfonts, keep the fonts directory and all its sibdirectories as well.)
-The bin subdirectory should be added to your PATH. The msdos
-subdirectory includes a PIF and an icon file for Emacs which you might
-find useful if you run Emacs under MS Windows.
+installed intlfonts, keep the fonts directory and all its
+subdirectories as well.) The bin subdirectory should be added to your
+PATH. The msdos subdirectory includes a PIF and an icon file for
+Emacs which you might find useful if you run Emacs under MS Windows.
Emacs on MSDOS finds the lisp, etc and info directories by looking in
../lisp, ../etc and ../info, starting from the directory where the
Version 2.0 of djgpp has two bugs that affect Emacs. We've included
corrected versions of two files from djgpp in the msdos subdirectory:
is_exec.c and sigaction.c. To work around the bugs, compile these
-files and link them into temacs. Djgpp version 2.01 have these bugs
-fixed, so upgrade if you can before building Emacs.
+files and link them into temacs. Djgpp versions 2.01 and later have
+these bugs fixed, so upgrade if you can before building Emacs.
+\f
+COPYING PERMISSIONS
+
+ Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
+ of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
+ copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
+ and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
+ for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
+
+ Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
+ of this document, or of portions of it,
+ under the above conditions, provided also that they
+ carry prominent notices stating who last changed them,
+ and that any new or changed statements about the activities
+ of the Free Software Foundation are approved by the Foundation.