GNU Emacs Installation Guide

Copyright (C) 1992, 1994, 1996-1997, 2000-2021 Free Software Foundation,

Inc.

See the end of the file for license conditions.

This file contains general information on building GNU Emacs.

For more information specific to the MS-Windows, GNUstep/macOS, and

MS-DOS ports, also read the files nt/INSTALL, nextstep/INSTALL, and

msdos/INSTALL. For information about building from a repository checkout

(rather than a release), also read the file INSTALL.REPO.

BASIC INSTALLATION

On most Unix systems, you build Emacs by first running the 'configure'

shell script. This attempts to deduce the correct values for

various system-dependent variables and features, and find the

directories where certain system headers and libraries are kept.

In a few cases, you may need to explicitly tell configure where to

find some things, or what options to use.

'configure' creates a 'Makefile' in several subdirectories, and a

'src/config.h' file containing system-dependent definitions.

Running the 'make' utility then builds the package for your system.

Building Emacs requires GNU make, <https://www.gnu.org/software/make/>.

On most systems that Emacs supports, this is the default 'make' program.

Here's the procedure to build Emacs using 'configure' on systems which

are supported by it. In some cases, if the simplified procedure fails,

you might need to use various non-default options, and maybe perform

some of the steps manually. The more detailed description in the other

sections of this guide will help you do that, so please refer to those

sections if you need to.

1. Obtain and unpack the Emacs release, with commands like this:

wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-VERSION.tar.xz

tar -xf emacs-VERSION.tar.xz

where VERSION is the Emacs version number.

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.

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 may have to pass to 'configure'

one or more options specifying the explicit machine configuration

name, where to find various headers and libraries, etc.

Refer to the section DETAILED BUILDING AND INSTALLATION below.

If 'configure' didn't find some image support libraries, such as

Xpm and jpeg, refer to "Image support libraries" below.

If the details printed by 'configure' don't make any sense to

you, but there are no obvious errors, assume that 'configure' did

its job and proceed.

4. Invoke the 'make' program:

make

5. 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

To test Emacs further (intended mostly to help developers):

make check

6. 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 space,

you may remove the program binaries and object files from the

directory where you built Emacs:

make clean

You can delete the entire build directory if you do not plan to

build Emacs again, but it can be useful to keep for debugging.

If you want to build Emacs again with different configure options,

first clean the source directories:

make distclean

Note that the install automatically saves space by compressing

(provided you have the 'gzip' program) those installed Lisp source (.el)

files that have corresponding .elc versions, as well as the Info files.

You can read a brief summary about common make targets:

make help

ADDITIONAL DISTRIBUTION FILES

* Complex Text Layout support libraries

On GNU and Unix systems, Emacs needs optional libraries to correctly

display such complex scripts as Indic and Khmer, and also for scripts

that require Arabic shaping support (Arabic and Farsi). If the

HarfBuzz library is installed, Emacs will build with it and use it for

this purpose. HarfBuzz is the preferred shaping engine, both on Posix

hosts and on MS-Windows, so we recommend installing it before building

Emacs. The alternative for GNU/Linux and Posix systems is to use the

"m17n-db", "libm17n-flt", and "libotf" libraries. (On some systems,

particularly GNU/Linux, these libraries may be already 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. On MS-Windows, if HarfBuzz is not available, Emacs

will use the Uniscribe shaping engine that is part of the OS.

Note that Emacs cannot support complex scripts on a TTY, unless the

terminal includes such a support. However, most modern terminal

emulators, such as xterm, do support such scripts.

* intlfonts-VERSION.tar.gz

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

each character set.

The intlfonts distribution contains its own installation instructions,

in the intlfonts/README file. See also the Emacs Frequently Asked

Questions info pages "(efaq) How to add fonts" for installation

instructions.

* Image support libraries

Emacs needs libraries 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. 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. Although none of them are

essential for running Emacs, some are important enough that

'configure' will report an error if they are absent from a system that

has X11 support, unless 'configure' is specifically told to omit them.

Here's a list of some of these libraries, and the URLs where they

can be found (in the unlikely event that your distribution does not

provide them). By default, libraries marked with an X are required if

X11 is being used.

libXaw3d https://directory.fsf.org/project/Xaw3d

X libxpm for XPM: https://www.x.org/releases/current/src/lib/

X libpng for PNG: http://www.libpng.org/

libz (for PNG): https://www.zlib.net/

X libjpeg for JPEG: https://www.ijg.org/

X libtiff for TIFF: http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/

X libgif for GIF: http://giflib.sourceforge.net/

librsvg2 for SVG: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/LibRsvg

libwebp for WebP: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/

If you supply the appropriate --without-LIB option, 'configure' will

omit the corresponding library from Emacs, even if that makes for a

less-pleasant user interface. Otherwise, Emacs will configure itself

to build with these libraries if 'configure' finds them on your

system, and 'configure' will complain and exit if a library marked 'X'

is not found on a system that uses X11. Use --without-LIB if your

version of a library won't work because some routines are missing.

* Extra fonts

The Emacs distribution does not include fonts and does not install

them.

On the GNU system, Emacs supports both X fonts and local fonts

(i.e. fonts managed by the fontconfig library). If you need more

fonts than your distribution normally provides, you must install them

yourself. See <https://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/> for a large

number of free Unicode fonts.

* GNU/Linux development packages

Many GNU/Linux systems do not come with development packages by default;

they include the files that you need to run Emacs, but not those you

need to compile it. For example, to compile Emacs with support for X

and graphics libraries, you may need to install the X development

package(s), and development versions of the jpeg, png, etc. packages.

The names of the packages that you need vary according to the

GNU/Linux distribution that you use, and the options that you want to

configure Emacs with. On Debian-based systems, you can install all the

packages needed to build the installed version of Emacs with a command

like 'apt-get build-dep emacs' (on older systems, replace 'emacs' with

e.g. 'emacs25'). On Red Hat-based systems, the corresponding command is

'dnf builddep emacs' (on older systems, use 'yum-builddep' instead).

On FreeBSD, the command is 'pkg install -y `pkg rquery %dn emacs-devel`'.

DETAILED BUILDING AND INSTALLATION:

(This is for a Unix or Unix-like system. For GNUstep and macOS,

see nextstep/INSTALL. For non-ancient versions of MS Windows, see

the file nt/INSTALL. For MS-DOS and MS Windows 3.X, see msdos/INSTALL.)

1) See BASIC INSTALLATION above for getting and configuring Emacs.

2) In the unlikely event that 'configure' does not detect your system

type correctly, consult './etc/MACHINES' to see what --host, --build

options you should pass to 'configure'. That file also offers hints

for getting around some possible installation problems.

3) You can build Emacs in the top-level Emacs source directory

or in a separate directory.

3a) To build in the top-level Emacs source directory, go to that

directory and run the program 'configure' as follows:

./configure [--OPTION[=VALUE]] ...

If 'configure' cannot determine your system type, try again

specifying the proper --build, --host options explicitly.

If you don't want X support, specify '--with-x=no'. If you omit this

option, 'configure' will try to figure out for itself whether your

system has X, and arrange to use it if present.

The '--x-includes=DIR' and '--x-libraries=DIR' options tell the build

process where the compiler should look for the include files and

object libraries used with the X Window System. Normally, 'configure'

is able to find them; these options are necessary if you have your X

Window System files installed in unusual places. These options also

accept a list of directories, separated with colons.

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 'gtk' (the default), 'athena', or 'motif' ('yes' and

'lucid' are synonyms for 'athena'). Compiling with Motif causes a

standard File Selection Dialog to pop up when you invoke file commands

with the mouse. You can get fancy 3D-style scroll bars, even without

Gtk or Motif, if you have the Xaw3d library installed (see

"Image support libraries" above for Xaw3d availability).

You can tell configure where to search for GTK by giving it the

argument PKG_CONFIG='/full/name/of/pkg-config'.

Emacs will autolaunch a D-Bus session bus, when the environment

variable DISPLAY is set, but no session bus is running. This might be

inconvenient for Emacs when running as daemon or running via a remote

ssh connection. In order to completely prevent the use of D-Bus, configure

Emacs with the options '--without-dbus --without-gconf --without-gsettings'.

To read email via a network protocol like IMAP or POP, you can

configure Emacs with the option '--with-mailutils', so that it always

uses the GNU Mailutils 'movemail' program to retrieve mail; this is

the default if GNU Mailutils is installed. Otherwise the Emacs build

procedure builds and installs an auxiliary 'movemail' program, a

limited and insecure substitute; when this happens, there are several

configure options such as --without-pop that provide fine-grained

control over Emacs 'movemail' construction.

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. While POP3 support is typically enabled,

whether Emacs actually uses POP3 is controlled by individual users;

see the Rmail chapter of the Emacs manual. Unless --with-mailutils is

in effect, it is a good idea to configure without POP3 support so that

users are less likely to inadvertently read email via insecure

channels. On native MS-Windows, --with-pop is the default; on other

platforms, --without-pop is the default.

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 "Image support libraries" 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

--without-rsvg for SVG image support

--without-webp for WebP image support

Although ImageMagick support is disabled by default due to security

and stability concerns, you can enable it with --with-imagemagick.

Use --without-toolkit-scroll-bars to disable 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 --with-xinput2 to enable the use of version 2 of the X Input

Extension. This enables support for touchscreens, pinch gestures, and

scroll wheels that report scroll deltas at pixel-level precision.

Use --disable-largefile to omit support for files larger than 2GB, and

--disable-year2038 to omit support for timestamps past the year 2038,

on systems which allow omitting such support. This may help when

linking Emacs to a library with an ABI that requires a particular

width for off_t or for time_t.

Use --without-sound to disable sound support.

Use --without-all for a smaller executable with fewer dependencies on

external libraries, at the cost of disabling many features. Although

--without-all disables libraries not needed for ordinary Emacs

operation, it does enable X support, and using the GTK2 or GTK3

toolkit creates a lot of library dependencies. So if you want to

build a small executable with very basic X support, use --without-all

--with-x-toolkit=no. For the smallest possible executable without X,

use --without-all --without-x. If you want to build with just a few

features enabled, you can combine --without-all with --with-FEATURE.

For example, you can use --without-all --without-x --with-dbus to

build with D-Bus support and nothing more.

Use --with-gnutls=ifavailable to use GnuTLS if available but go ahead

and build without it if not available. This overrides Emacs's default

behavior of refusing to build if GnuTLS is absent. When X11 support

is enabled, the libraries for gif, jpeg, png, tiff, and xpm are in the

same strongly-recommended category as GnuTLS, and have similar options.

Use --with-wide-int to implement Emacs values with the type 'long long',

even on hosts where a narrower type would do. With this option, on a

typical 32-bit host, Emacs integers have 62 bits instead of 30.

Use --with-cairo to compile Emacs with Cairo drawing.

Use --with-modules to build Emacs with support for dynamic modules.

This needs a C compiler that supports '__attribute__ ((cleanup (...)))',

as in GCC 3.4 and later.

Use --enable-gcc-warnings to enable compile-time checks that warn

about possibly-questionable C code. This is intended for developers

and is useful with GNU-compatible compilers. On a recent GNU system

there should be no warnings; on older and on non-GNU systems the

generated warnings may still be useful, though you may prefer

configuring with --enable-gcc-warnings=warn-only so they are not

treated as errors. The default is --enable-gcc-warnings=warn-only if

it appears to be a developer build, and is --disable-gcc-warnings

otherwise.

Use --disable-silent-rules to cause 'make' to give more details about

the commands it executes. This can be helpful when debugging a build

that goes awry. 'make V=1' also enables the extra chatter.

Use --enable-link-time-optimization to enable link-time optimization.

With GCC, you need GCC 4.5.0 and later, and 'configure' arranges for

linking to be parallelized if possible. With Clang, you need GNU

binutils with the gold linker and plugin support, along with the LLVM

gold plugin <https://llvm.org/docs/GoldPlugin.html>. Link time

optimization is not the default as it tends to cause crashes and to

make Emacs slower.

The '--prefix=PREFIXDIR' option specifies where the installation process

should put emacs and its data files. This defaults to '/usr/local'.

- Emacs (and the other utilities users run) go in PREFIXDIR/bin

(unless the '--exec-prefix' option says otherwise).

- The architecture-independent files go in PREFIXDIR/share/emacs/VERSION

(where VERSION is the version number of Emacs, like '23.2').

- The architecture-dependent files go in

PREFIXDIR/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION

(where CONFIGURATION is the configuration name, like

i686-pc-linux-gnu), unless the '--exec-prefix' option says otherwise.

The '--exec-prefix=EXECDIR' option allows you to specify a separate

portion of the directory tree for installing architecture-specific

files, like executables and utility programs. If specified,

- Emacs (and the other utilities users run) go in EXECDIR/bin, and

- The architecture-dependent files go in

EXECDIR/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION.

EXECDIR/bin should be a directory that is normally in users' PATHs.

For example, the command

./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu --without-sound

configures Emacs to build for a 32-bit GNU/Linux distribution,

without sound support.

'configure' doesn't do any compilation or installation itself.

It just creates the files that influence those things:

'./Makefile' in the top-level directory and several subdirectories;

and './src/config.h'.

When it is done, 'configure' prints a description of what it did and

creates a shell script 'config.status' which, when run, recreates the

same configuration. If 'configure' exits with an error after

disturbing the status quo, it removes 'config.status'. 'configure'

also creates a file 'config.cache' that saves the results of its tests

to make reconfiguring faster, and a file 'config.log' containing compiler

output (useful mainly for debugging 'configure'). You can give

'configure' the option '--cache-file=FILE' to use the results of the

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 features 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, CPP and CC

before running 'configure'. CPP is the command which invokes the

preprocessor, CPPFLAGS lists the options passed to it, 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. By default, gcc is used if available.

Here's an example of a 'configure' invocation, assuming a Bourne-like

shell such as Bash, which uses these variables:

./configure \

CPPFLAGS='-I/foo/myinclude' LDFLAGS='-L/bar/mylib' \

CFLAGS='-O3' LIBS='-lfoo -lbar'

(this is all one shell command). 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 and libbar

libraries in addition to the standard ones.

For some libraries, like Gtk+, fontconfig and ALSA, 'configure' uses

pkg-config to find where those libraries are installed.

If you want pkg-config to look in special directories, you have to set

PKG_CONFIG_PATH to point to the directories where the .pc-files for

those libraries are. For example:

./configure \

PKG_CONFIG_PATH='/usr/local/alsa/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/gtk+-2.8/lib/pkgconfig'

3b) To build in a separate directory, go to that directory

and run the program 'configure' as follows:

SOURCE-DIR/configure CONFIGURATION-NAME [--OPTION[=VALUE]] ...

SOURCE-DIR refers to the top-level Emacs source directory which is

where Emacs's configure script is located. 'configure' looks for the

Emacs source code in the directory that 'configure' is in.

4) Put into './lisp/site-init.el' or './lisp/site-load.el' any Emacs

Lisp code you want Emacs to load before it is dumped out. Use

site-load.el for additional libraries if you arrange for their

documentation strings to be in the etc/DOC file (see

src/Makefile.in if you wish to figure out how to do that). For all

else, use site-init.el. Do not load byte-compiled code which

was built with a non-nil value of 'byte-compile-dynamic'.

It is not a good idea to edit the normal .el files that come with Emacs.

Instead, use a file like site-init.el to change settings.

To change the value of a variable that is already defined in Emacs,

you should use the Lisp function 'setq', not 'defvar'. For example,

(setq news-inews-program "/usr/bin/inews")

is how you would override the default value of the variable

news-inews-program.

Before you override a variable this way, *look at the value* that the

variable gets by default! Make sure you know what kind of value the

variable should have. If you don't pay attention to what you are

doing, you'll make a mistake.

The 'site-*.el' files are nonexistent in the distribution. You do not

need to create them if you have nothing to put in them.

5) Refer to the file './etc/TERMS' for information on fields you may

wish to add to various termcap entries. (This is unlikely to be necessary.)

6) Run 'make' in the top directory of the Emacs distribution to finish

building Emacs in the standard way. The final executable file is

named 'src/emacs'. You can execute this file "in place" without

copying it, if you wish; then it automatically uses the sibling

directories ../lisp, ../lib-src, ../info.

Or you can "install" the executable and the other files into their

installed locations, with 'make install'. By default, Emacs's files

are installed in the following directories:

'/usr/local/bin' holds the executable programs users normally run -

'emacs', 'etags', 'ctags', 'emacsclient'.

'/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/lisp' holds the Emacs Lisp library;

'VERSION' stands for the number of the Emacs version

you are installing, like '23.1' or '23.2'. Since the

Lisp library changes from one version of Emacs to

another, including the version number in the path

allows you to have several versions of Emacs installed

at the same time; in particular, you don't have to

make Emacs unavailable while installing a new version.

'/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/etc' holds the Emacs tutorial, the DOC

file, and other architecture-independent files Emacs

might need while running.

'/usr/local/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION-NAME' contains executable

programs used by Emacs that users are not expected to

run themselves.

'VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are

installing, and 'CONFIGURATION-NAME' is the value

deduced by the 'configure' program to identify the

architecture and operating system of your machine,

like 'i686-pc-linux-gnu' or 'sparc-sun-sunos'. Since

these files are specific to the version of Emacs,

operating system, and architecture in use, including

the configuration name in the path allows you to have

several versions of Emacs for any mix of machines and

operating systems installed at the same time; this is

useful for sites at which different kinds of machines

share the file system Emacs is installed on.

'/usr/local/share/info' holds the on-line documentation for Emacs,

known as "info files". Many other GNU programs are

documented using info files as well, so this directory

stands apart from the other, Emacs-specific directories.

'/usr/local/share/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

the command. See the section below called 'MAKE VARIABLES' for more

information on this.

7) Check the file 'dir' in your site's info directory (usually

/usr/local/share/info) to make sure that it has a menu entry for the

Emacs info files.

8) If your system uses lock files to interlock access to mailer inbox files,

and if --with-mailutils is not in effect, then you might need to

make the Emacs-specific 'movemail' program setuid or setgid in order

to enable it to write the lock files. We believe this is safe.

9) 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'.

MAKE VARIABLES

You can change where the build process installs Emacs and its data

files by specifying values for 'make' variables as part of the 'make'

command line. For example, if you type

make install bindir=/usr/local/gnubin

the 'bindir=/usr/local/gnubin' argument indicates that the Emacs

executable files should go in '/usr/local/gnubin', not

'/usr/local/bin'.

Here is a complete list of the variables you may want to set.

'bindir' indicates where to put executable programs that users can

run. This defaults to /usr/local/bin.

'datadir' indicates where to put the architecture-independent

read-only data files that Emacs refers to while it runs; it

defaults to /usr/local/share. We create the following

subdirectories under 'datadir':

- 'emacs/VERSION/lisp', containing the Emacs Lisp library, and

- 'emacs/VERSION/etc', containing the tutorials, DOC file, etc.

'VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are installing,

like '23.1' or '23.2'. Since these files vary from one version

of Emacs to another, including the version number in the path

allows you to have several versions of Emacs installed at the

same time; this means that you don't have to make Emacs

unavailable while installing a new version.

'libexecdir' indicates where to put architecture-specific data files that

Emacs refers to as it runs; it defaults to '/usr/local/libexec'.

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.

'VERSION' is the number of the Emacs version you are installing,

and 'CONFIGURATION-NAME' is the value deduced by the

'configure' program to identify the architecture and operating

system of your machine, like 'i686-pc-linux-gnu' or 'sparc-sun-sunos'.

Since these files are specific to the version of Emacs,

operating system, and architecture in use, including the

configuration name in the path allows you to have several

versions of Emacs for any mix of machines and operating

systems installed at the same time; this is useful for sites

at which different kinds of machines share the file system

Emacs is installed on.

'infodir' indicates where to put the info files distributed with

Emacs; it defaults to '/usr/local/share/info'.

'mandir' indicates where to put the man pages for Emacs and its

utilities (like 'etags'); it defaults to

'/usr/local/share/man/man1'.

'prefix' doesn't give a path for any specific part of Emacs; instead,

its value is used to determine the defaults for all the

architecture-independent path variables - 'datadir',

'sharedstatedir', 'infodir', and 'mandir'. Its default value is

'/usr/local'; the other variables add on 'lib' or 'man' to it

by default.

For example, suppose your site generally places GNU software

under '/usr/users/software/gnusoft' instead of '/usr/local'.

By including

'prefix=/usr/users/software/gnusoft'

in the arguments to 'make', you can instruct the build process

to place all of the Emacs data files in the appropriate

directories under that path.

'exec_prefix' serves the same purpose as 'prefix', but instead

determines the default values for the architecture-dependent

path variables - 'bindir' and 'libexecdir'.

The above variables serve analogous purposes in the makefiles for all

GNU software; the following variables are specific to Emacs.

'archlibdir' indicates where Emacs installs and expects the executable

files and other architecture-dependent data it uses while

running. Its default value, based on 'libexecdir' (which

see), is '/usr/local/libexec/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION-NAME'

(where VERSION and CONFIGURATION-NAME are as described above).

'GZIP_PROG' is the name of the executable that compresses installed info,

manual, and .el files. It defaults to gzip. Setting it to

the empty string suppresses compression.

Remember that you must specify any variable values you need each time

you run 'make' in the top directory. If you run 'make' once to build

emacs, test it, and then run 'make' again to install the files, you

must provide the same variable settings each time. To make the

settings persist, you can edit them into the 'Makefile' in the top

directory, but be aware that running the 'configure' program erases

'Makefile' and rebuilds it from 'Makefile.in'.

The path for finding Lisp files is specified in src/epaths.h,

a file which is generated by running configure. To change the path,

you can edit the definition of PATH_LOADSEARCH in that file

before you run 'make'.

The top-level Makefile stores the variable settings it used in the

Makefiles for the subdirectories, so you don't have to specify them

when running make in the subdirectories.

PROBLEMS

See the file './etc/PROBLEMS' for a list of various problems sometimes

encountered, and what to do about them.



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 <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.