-
-
Save bburns/43c9f170361aecee3b71 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Windows build instructions for 64-bit Emacs (draft)
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Building and Installing Emacs on 64-bit MS-Windows | |
using MSYS2 and MinGW-w64 | |
Copyright (c) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc. | |
See the end of the file for license conditions. | |
This document describes how to compile a 64-bit GNU Emacs using MSYS2 and | |
MinGW-w64. For more detailed information on the build process, and instructions | |
for building a 32-bit Emacs using MSYS and MinGW, see the INSTALL document in | |
this directory. | |
Do not use this recipe with Cygwin. For building on Cygwin, use the normal | |
installation instructions in ../INSTALL. | |
* Requirements | |
The total space required is 3GB: 1.8GB for MSYS2 / MinGW-w64 and 1.2GB for | |
Emacs with the full repository, or less if you're using a release tarball. | |
* Set up the MinGW-w64 / MSYS2 build environment | |
MinGW-w64 provides a complete runtime for projects built with gcc for 64-bit | |
Windows - it's located at http://mingw-w64.org/. | |
MSYS2 is a Cygwin-derived software distribution for Windows which provides | |
build tools for MinGW-w64 - see http://msys2.github.io/. | |
** Download and install MinGW-w64 and MSYS2 | |
You can download the x86_64 version of MSYS2 (i.e. msys2-x86_64-<date>.exe) | |
from | |
https://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/x86_64 | |
Run this file to install MSYS2 in your preferred directory, e.g. the default | |
C:\msys64 - this will install MinGW-w64 also. Note that directory names | |
containing spaces may cause problems. | |
Then you'll need to add the following directories to your Windows PATH | |
environment variable - | |
c:\msys64\usr\bin;c:\msys64\mingw64\bin | |
you can do this through Control Panel / System and Security / System / | |
Advanced system settings / Environment Variables / Edit path. | |
Adding these directories to your PATH tells Emacs where to find the DLLs it | |
needs to run, and some optional commands like grep and find. These commands | |
will also be available at the Windows console. | |
** Download and install the necessary packages | |
Run msys2_shell.bat in your MSYS2 directory and you will see a BASH window | |
opened. | |
In the BASH prompt, use the following command to install the necessary | |
packages (you can copy and paste it into the shell with Shift + Insert): | |
pacman -S base-devel \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-xpm-nox \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-libtiff \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-giflib \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-librsvg \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-libxml2 \ | |
mingw-w64-x86_64-gnutls | |
The packages include the base developer tools (autoconf, automake, grep, make, | |
etc.), the compiler toolchain (gcc, gdb, etc.), several image libraries, an | |
xml library, and the GnuTLS (transport layer security) library. Only the | |
first three packages are required (base-devel, toolchain, xpm-nox) - the rest | |
are optional. | |
You now have a complete build environment for Emacs. | |
* Install git (optional) and disable autocrlf | |
If you're going to be building the development version of Emacs from the git | |
repository, and you don't already have git on your system, you can install it | |
in your MSYS2 environment with: | |
pacman -S git | |
The autocrlf feature of Git may interfere with the configure file, so it is | |
best to disable this feature by running the command: | |
git config core.autocrlf false | |
* Get the Emacs source code | |
Now you can either get an existing release version of the Emacs source code | |
from the GNU ftp site, or get the more current version and history from the | |
git repository. | |
You can always find the most recent information on these sources from the GNU | |
Savannah Emacs site, https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs. | |
** From the FTP site | |
The Emacs ftp site is located at http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ - download the | |
version you want to build and put the file into a location like C:\emacs\, | |
then uncompress it with tar. This will put the Emacs source into a folder like | |
C:\emacs\emacs-24.5: | |
cd /c/emacs | |
tar xf emacs-24.5.tar.xz | |
** From the git repository | |
To download the git repository, do something like the following - this will | |
put the Emacs source into C:\emacs\emacs-25: | |
mkdir /c/emacs | |
cd /c/emacs | |
git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git emacs-25 | |
* Build Emacs | |
Now you're ready to build and install Emacs with autogen, configure, make, | |
and make install. | |
First we need to switch to the MinGW-w64 environment - exit the MSYS2 BASH | |
console and run mingw64_shell.bat in the C:\msys64 folder, then cd back to | |
your Emacs source directory, e.g.: | |
cd /c/emacs/emacs-25 | |
** Run autogen | |
Run autogen to generate the configure script (note: this step is not necessary | |
if you are using a release source tarball, as the configure file is included): | |
./autogen.sh | |
** Run configure | |
Now you can run configure, which will build the various Makefiles - note that | |
the example given here is just a simple one - for more information on the | |
options available please see the nt/INSTALL file. | |
The --prefix option specifies a location for the resulting binary files, which | |
'make install' will use - in this example we set it to C:\emacs\emacs-25. If a | |
prefix is not specified the files will be put in the standard Unix directories | |
located in your C:\msys64 directory, but this is not recommended. | |
Note also that we need to disable Imagemagick because Emacs does not yet | |
support it on Windows. | |
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig \ | |
./configure \ | |
--prefix=/c/emacs/emacs-25 \ | |
--without-imagemagick | |
** Run make | |
This will compile Emacs and build the executables, putting them in the src | |
directory: | |
make | |
To speed up the process, you can try running | |
make -jN | |
where N is the number of cores in your system - if your MSYS2 make supports | |
parallel execution it will run significantly faster. | |
** Run make install | |
Now you can run make install, which will copy the executable and other files | |
to the location specified in the configure step. This will create the bin, | |
libexec, share, and var directories: | |
make install | |
You can also say | |
make install prefix=/c/somewhere | |
to install them somewhere else. | |
* Test Emacs | |
To test it out, run | |
./bin/runemacs.exe -Q | |
and if all went well, you will have a new 64-bit version of Emacs. | |
* Make a shortcut | |
To make a shortcut to run the new Emacs, right click on the location where you | |
want to put it, e.g. the Desktop, select New / Shortcut, then select | |
runemacs.exe in the bin folder of the new Emacs, and give it a name. | |
You can set any command line options by right clicking on the resulting | |
shortcut, select Properties, then add any options to the Target command, | |
e.g. --debug-init. | |
* Credits | |
Thanks to Chris Zheng for the original build outline as used by the | |
emacsbinw64 project, located at: | |
https://sourceforge.net/p/emacsbinw64/wiki/Build%20guideline%20for%20MSYS2-MinGW-w64%20system/ | |
* License | |
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 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. | |
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
Hi Chris,
Thanks, I updated the URLs and removed the time info, but would like to leave the Install git and Get the source code sections so this can be a simple / self-contained example to follow - what lost me in the existing INSTALL file was all the different options, so I liked your simple instructions, and tried to stick with that. At some point maybe we can merge the two files, or Eli might want to do that now.
I took out the org-mode etc - I wasn't sure about including that, but the other INSTALL file doesn't have it either, and I removed your email address as I thought maybe I shouldn't publish that - I can add it back if you'd rather.
And I nearly didn't notice your comment - I didn't get a notification but happened to scroll down to the end and saw it - I thought it would send a message of some kind, but apparently not - isaacs/github#21. So I'll send you an email also...
Best,
Brian