This document is an up-to-date guide on compile Emacs 31 on windows with MSYS2, and make a installation with native compile that can work without MSYS2.
The idea is after get a working Emacs, you may delete MSYS2 environment to free some disk space, and forget about rebuilding Emacs until the next time you feel need to, without need to figure out everything again.
Specially thanks to @include-yy on emacs-china.org for providing guides on UCRT64 and use GCCJIT.
Get from https://github.com/msys2/msys2-installer/releases/
You may use the 7zip SFX one.
We are using the UCRT64.
pacman -Syu
After complete, restart terminal, and run
pacman -Su
To install the required packages for building Emacs. (Maybe other people can came up with a better list)
pacman -Su \
autoconf \
autogen \
automake \
automake-wrapper \
git \
libidn-devel \
libltdl \
libnettle-devel \
libopenssl \
libp11-kit-devel \
libtasn1-devel \
libunistring \
make \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-bzip2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cairo \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-crt-git \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-expat \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-fontconfig \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-freetype \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc-libs \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gdk-pixbuf2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gettext \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-giflib \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-glib2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gmp \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gnutls \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-harfbuzz \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-headers-git \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-imagemagick \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-jansson \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libgccjit \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libiconv \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libidn2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libpng \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-librsvg \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-sqlite3 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-tree-sitter \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libtiff \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libunistring \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libxml2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-nettle \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-p11-kit \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-winpthreads \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-xpm-nox \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-xz \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-zlib \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-jbigkit \
pkgconf \
texinfo \
git config --global core.autocrlf false
git clone https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs --depth 1
It is recommended to disable Windows Defender scan for MSYS2 or use Window 11 Dev Drive feature to speed up compilation.
It is important to --with-gnutls
, because otherwise Emacs won’t even
able to use ELPA outside MSYS2. Also, dbus is not useful for Emacs on
Windows. You may change other flags as you see appropriate.
Set prefix
to somewhere appropriate.
cd emacs
./autogen.sh
mkdir build
cd build
target=/g/emacs
../configure prefix=$target \
--with-native-compilation=aot \
--with-gnutls \
--without-dbus \
--without-pop \
--with-xpm \
--with-imagemagick \
--with-tree-sitter
Check if the configure log is appropriate.
Then make bootstrap
it (for develop branch). After building completes,
make install
and open the $target
directory.
The easiest way is to copy all the dlls from /ucrt64/bin
, and
exploit the property that Windows won’t allow delete currently opened
files to trim it. Still that doesn’t mean all the successfully deleted
DLLs are safe to purge. Before you hit “Clean Recycle Bin”, tt is a
good idea to check against the Windows binary distributed by GNU for
DLL used by Emacs.
The good things is, even if you have found certain DLL is missing afterwards, you can still download the individual package without reinstall MSYS2.
This requires libXpm-noX4.dll
. Emacs can start without this DLL
but then it won’t be able to display XPM image.
libtree-sitter.dll
depends on wasmtime.dll
.
Additional works are required to make native compile work without complete MSYS2 environment.
mkdir $target/lib/gcc
cp /ucrt64/lib/{crtbegin,crtend,dllcrt2}.o $target/lib/gcc
cp /ucrt64/lib/lib{advapi32,gcc_s,mingw32,msvcrt,shell32,kernel32,mingwex,pthread,user32}.a $target/lib/gcc
# adjust path according to gcc version
cp /ucrt64/lib/gcc/x86_64-w64-mingw32/14.2.0/libgcc.a $target/lib/gcc
cp /ucrt64/bin/{ld,as}.exe $target/lib/gcc