- Building and Installing Emacs
- on Windows NT/2K/XP and Windows 95/98/ME
+ Building and Installing Emacs on Windows
+ (from 95 to 7 and beyond)
- Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012
- Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+ Copyright (C) 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.
* For the impatient
Do not use this recipe with Cygwin. For building on Cygwin,
use the normal installation instructions, ../INSTALL.
+ If you have a Cygwin or MSYS port of Bash on your Path, you will be
+ better off removing it from PATH. (For details, search for "MSYS
+ sh.exe" below.)
+
1. Change to the `nt' directory (the directory of this file):
cd nt
- 2. Run configure.bat. From the COMMAND.COM/CMD.EXE command prompt:
+ 2. Run configure.bat.
+
+ 2a.If you use MSVC, set up the build environment by running the
+ SetEnv.cmd batch file from the appropriate SDK directory. (Skip
+ this step if you are using MinGW.) For example:
+
+ "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\SetEnv.cmd" /x86 /Debug
+
+ if you are going to compile a debug version, or
+
+ "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\SetEnv.cmd" /x86 /Release
+
+ if you are going to compile an optimized version.
+
+ 2b.From the COMMAND.COM/CMD.EXE command prompt type:
configure
- from a Unixy shell prompt:
+ From a Unixy shell prompt:
cmd /c configure.bat
or
command.com /c configure.bat
3. Run the Make utility suitable for your environment. If you build
- with the Microsoft's Visual C compiler (but see notes about using
- VC++ 8.0 and later below):
+ with the Microsoft's Visual C compiler:
nmake
With GNU Make, you can use the -j command-line option to have
Make execute several commands at once, like this:
+ gmake -j 2
+
+ (With versions of GNU Make before 3.82, you need also set the
+ XMFLAGS variable, like this:
+
gmake -j 2 XMFLAGS="-j 2"
- The XMFLAGS variable overrides the default behavior of GNU Make
- on Windows, whereby recursive Make invocations reset the maximum
- number of simultaneous commands to 1. The above command allows
- up to 4 simultaneous commands at once in the top-level Make, and
- up to 3 in each one of the recursive Make's.
+ The XMFLAGS variable overrides the default behavior of version
+ 3.82 and older of GNU Make on Windows, whereby recursive Make
+ invocations reset the maximum number of simultaneous commands to
+ 1. The above command allows up to 4 simultaneous commands at
+ once in the top-level Make, and up to 3 in each one of the
+ recursive Make's.)
4. Generate the Info manuals (only if you are building out of Bazaar,
and if you have makeinfo.exe installed):
* Supported development environments
To compile Emacs, you will need either Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0, or
- later up to 7.0, and nmake, or a Windows port of GCC 2.95 or later
- with MinGW and W32 API support and a port of GNU Make. You can use
- the Cygwin ports of GCC, but Emacs requires the MinGW headers and
- libraries to build (latest versions of the Cygwin toolkit, at least
- since v1.3.3, include the MinGW headers and libraries as an integral
- part).
-
- Note that building Emacs with Visual Studio 2005 (VC++ 8.0) and
- later is not supported at this time, due to changes introduced by
- Microsoft into the libraries shipped with the compiler.
+ later and nmake, or a Windows port of GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
+ and Windows API support and a port of GNU Make. You can use the Cygwin
+ ports of GCC, but Emacs requires the MinGW headers and libraries to
+ build (latest versions of the Cygwin toolkit, at least since v1.3.3,
+ include the MinGW headers and libraries as an integral part).
The rest of this file assumes you have a working development
- environment. If you just installed such an environment, try
+ environment. If you just installed such an environment, try
building a trivial C "Hello world" program, and see if it works. If
it doesn't work, resolve that problem first! If you use Microsoft
Visual Studio .NET 2003, don't forget to run the VCVARS32.BAT batch
file from the `Bin' subdirectory of the directory where you have
- installed VS.NET.
+ installed VS.NET. With other versions of MSVC, run the SetEnv.cmd
+ batch file from the `Bin' subdirectory of the directory where you
+ have the SDK installed.
If you use the MinGW port of GCC and GNU Make to build Emacs, there
are some compatibility issues wrt Make and the shell that is run by
for example). Also see the Trouble-shooting section below if you
decide to go ahead and use Cygwin make.
- In addition, using 4NT or TCC as your shell is known to fail the build
- process, at least since 4NT version 3.01. Use CMD.EXE, the default
- Windows shell, instead. MSYS sh.exe also appears to cause various
- problems. If you have MSYS installed, try "make SHELL=cmd.exe" to
- force the use of cmd.exe instead of sh.exe.
+ In addition, using 4NT or TCC as your shell is known to fail the
+ build process, at least since 4NT version 3.01. Use CMD.EXE, the
+ default Windows shell, instead. MSYS sh.exe also appears to cause
+ various problems, e.g., it is known to cause failures in commands
+ like "cmd /c FOO" in the Makefiles, because it thinks "/c" is a
+ Unix-style file name that needs conversion to the Windows format.
+ If you have MSYS installed, try "make SHELL=cmd.exe" to force the
+ use of cmd.exe instead of the MSYS sh.exe.
sh exists no sh
emacs source with text!=binary.
[2] fails when needs to invoke shell commands; okay invoking gcc etc.
[3] requires LC_MESSAGES support to build; cannot build with early
- versions of cygwin.
+ versions of Cygwin.
[4] may fail on Windows 9X and Windows ME; if so, install Bash.
[5] fails when building leim due to the use of cygwin style paths.
May work if building emacs without leim.
like this, we recommend the use of the supported compilers mentioned
in the previous paragraph.
- You will also need a copy of the Posix cp, rm and mv programs. These
- and other useful Posix utilities can be obtained from one of several
+ You will also need a copy of the POSIX cp, rm and mv programs. These
+ and other useful POSIX utilities can be obtained from one of several
projects:
* http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ ( GnuWin32 )
* http://www.cygwin.com/ ( Cygwin )
* http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ ( UnxUtils )
- If you build Emacs on Windows 9X or ME, not on Windows 2K/XP or
- Windows NT, we suggest to install the Cygwin port of Bash. That is
- because the native Windows shell COMMAND.COM is too limited; the
- Emacs build procedure tries very hard to support even such limited
- shells, but as none of the Windows developers of Emacs work on
- Windows 9x, we cannot guarantee that it works without a more
- powerful shell.
+ If you build Emacs on 16-bit versions of Windows (9X or ME), we
+ suggest to install the Cygwin port of Bash. That is because the
+ native Windows shell COMMAND.COM is too limited; the Emacs build
+ procedure tries very hard to support even such limited shells, but
+ as none of the Windows developers of Emacs work on Windows 9X, we
+ cannot guarantee that it works without a more powerful shell.
Additional instructions and help for building Emacs on Windows can be
found at the Emacs Wiki:
absolutely sure the produced binaries will never need to be run under
a debugger.
+ Because of limitations of the stock Windows command shells, special
+ care is needed to pass some characters in the arguments of the
+ --cflags and --ldflags options. Backslashes should not be used in
+ file names passed to the compiler and linker via these options. Use
+ forward slashes instead. If the arguments to these two options
+ include the `=' character, like when passing a -DFOO=bar preprocessor
+ option, the argument with the `=' character should be enclosed in
+ quotes, like this:
+
+ configure --cflags "-DFOO=bar"
+
+ Support for options that include the `=' character require "command
+ extensions" to be enabled. (They are enabled by default, but your
+ system administrator could have changed that. See "cmd /?" for
+ details.) If command extensions are disabled, a warning message might
+ be displayed informing you that "using parameters that include the =
+ character by enclosing them in quotes will not be supported."
+
+ You may also use the --cflags and --ldflags options to pass
+ additional parameters to the compiler and linker, respectively; they
+ are frequently used to pass -I and -L flags to specify supplementary
+ include and library directories. If a directory name includes
+ spaces, you will need to enclose it in quotes, as follows
+ -I"C:/Program Files/GnuTLS-2.10.1/include". Note that only the
+ directory name is enclosed in quotes, not the entire argument. Also
+ note that this functionality is only supported if command extensions
+ are available. If command extensions are disabled and you attempt to
+ use this functionality you may see the following warning message
+ "Error in --cflags argument: ... Backslashes and quotes cannot be
+ used with --cflags. Please use forward slashes for filenames and
+ paths (e.g. when passing directories to -I)."
+
N.B. It is normal to see a few error messages output while configure
is running, when gcc support is being tested. These cannot be
- suppressed because of limitations in the Windows 9x command.com shell.
+ suppressed because of limitations in the Windows 9X command.com shell.
You are encouraged to look at the file config.log which shows details
for failed tests, after configure.bat finishes. Any unexplained failure
wrong. (Usually, any such failures happen because some headers are
missing due to bad packaging of the image support libraries.)
+ Note that any file path passed to the compiler or linker must use
+ forward slashes; using backslashes will cause compiler warnings or
+ errors about unrecognized escape sequences.
+
To use the external image support, the DLLs implementing the
functionality must be found when Emacs first needs them, either on the
PATH, or in the same directory as emacs.exe. Failure to find a
library is not an error; the associated image format will simply be
unavailable. Note that once Emacs has determined that a library can
not be found, there's no way to force it to try again, other than
- restarting. See the variable `image-library-alist' to configure the
+ restarting. See the variable `dynamic-library-alist' to configure the
expected names of the libraries.
Some image libraries have dependencies on one another, or on zlib.
For PNG images, we recommend to use versions 1.4.x and later of
libpng, because previous versions had security issues. You can find
precompiled libraries and headers on the GTK download page for
- Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html).
+ Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php).
Versions 1.4.0 and later of libpng are binary incompatible with
earlier versions, so Emacs will only look for libpng libraries which
are compatible with the version it was compiled against. That
version is given by the value of the Lisp variable `libpng-version';
- e.g., 10403 means version 1.4.3. The variable `image-library-alist'
+ e.g., 10403 means version 1.4.3. The variable `dynamic-library-alist'
is automatically set to name only those DLL names that are known to
be compatible with the version given by `libpng-version'. If PNG
support does not work for you even though you have the support DLL
installed, check the name of the installed DLL against
- `image-library-alist' and the value of `libpng-version', and
+ `dynamic-library-alist' and the value of `libpng-version', and
download compatible DLLs if needed.
+* Optional GnuTLS support
+
+ If configure.bat finds the gnutls/gnutls.h file in the include path,
+ Emacs is built with GnuTLS support by default; to avoid that you can
+ pass the argument --without-gnutls.
+
+ In order to support GnuTLS at runtime, a GnuTLS-enabled Emacs must
+ be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so
+ is not an error, but GnuTLS won't be available to the running
+ session.
+
+ You can get pre-built binaries (including any required DLL and the
+ header files) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
+
+* Optional libxml2 support
+
+ If configure.bat finds the libxml/HTMLparser.h file in the include path,
+ Emacs is built with libxml2 support by default; to avoid that you can
+ pass the argument --without-libxml2.
+
+ In order to support libxml2 at runtime, a libxml2-enabled Emacs must
+ be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so
+ is not an error, but libxml2 features won't be available to the
+ running session.
+
+ One place where you can get pre-built Windows binaries of libxml2
+ (including any required DLL and the header files) is here:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
+
+ To compile Emacs with libxml2 from that site, you will need to pass
+ the "--cflags -I/path/to/include/libxml2" option to configure.bat,
+ because libxml2 header files are installed in the include/libxml2
+ subdirectory of the directory where you unzip the binary
+ distribution. Other binary distributions might use other
+ directories, although include/libxml2 is the canonical place where
+ libxml2 headers are installed on Posix platforms.
+
+ You will also need to install the libiconv "development" tarball,
+ because the libiconv headers need to be available to the compiler
+ when you compile with libxml2 support. A MinGW port of libiconv can
+ be found on the MinGW site:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Base/libiconv/
+
+ You need the libiconv-X.Y.Z-N-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma tarball from that
+ site.
+
* Experimental SVG support
SVG support is currently experimental, and not built by default.
maybe a problem with the way Cairo or librsvg is using it that
doesn't show up on other platforms.
+* Optional extra runtime checks
+
+ The configure.bat option --enable-checking builds Emacs with some
+ optional extra runtime checks and assertions enabled. This may be
+ useful for debugging.
+
+* Optional extra libraries
+
+ You can pass --lib LIBNAME option to configure.bat to cause Emacs to
+ link with the specified library. You can use this option more than once.
+
* Building
After running configure, simply run the appropriate `make' program for
Removes the installed files in the bin subdirectory in addition to
the files removed by make cleanall.
+ make dist
+ Builds Emacs from the available sources and pre-compiled lisp files.
+ Packages Emacs binaries as full distribution and barebin distribution.
The following targets are intended only for use with the Bazaar sources.
bootstrap to rebuild. Occasionally it may be necessary to run this
target after an update.
+* Creating binary distributions
+
+ Binary distributions (full and barebin distributions) can be
+ automatically built and packaged from source tarballs or a bzr
+ checkout.
+
+ When building Emacs binary distributions, the --distfiles argument
+ to configure.bat specifies files to be included in the bin directory
+ of the binary distributions. This is intended for libraries that are
+ not built as part of Emacs, e.g. image libraries.
+
+ For example, specifying
+
+ --distfiles D:\distfiles\libXpm.dll
+
+ results in libXpm.dll being copied from D:\distfiles to the
+ bin directory before packaging starts.
+
+ Multiple files can be specified using multiple --distfiles arguments:
+
+ --distfiles D:\distfiles\libXpm.dll --distfiles C:\jpeglib\jpeg.dll
+
+ For packaging the binary distributions, the 'dist' make target uses
+ 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org), which must be installed and available
+ on the Windows Path.
+
* Trouble-shooting
The main problems that are likely to be encountered when building
- Emacs stem from using an old version of GCC, or old MinGW or W32 API
- headers. Additionally, cygwin ports of GNU make may require the Emacs
+ Emacs stem from using an old version of GCC, or old MinGW or Windows API
+ headers. Additionally, Cygwin ports of GNU make may require the Emacs
source tree to be mounted with text!=binary, because the makefiles
generated by configure.bat necessarily use DOS line endings. Also,
- cygwin ports of make must run in UNIX mode, either by specifying
+ Cygwin ports of make must run in UNIX mode, either by specifying
--unix on the command line, or MAKE_MODE=UNIX in the environment.
When configure runs, it attempts to detect when GCC itself, or the
2.95 or later is needed, because that is when the Windows port gained
sufficient support for anonymous structs and unions to cope with some
definitions from winnt.h that are used by addsection.c.
- Older versions of the W32 API headers that come with Cygwin and MinGW
+ Older versions of the Windows API headers that come with Cygwin and MinGW
may be missing some definitions required by Emacs, or broken in other
ways. In particular, uniscribe APIs were added to MinGW CVS only on
2006-03-26, so releases from before then cannot be used.
the debugger, and you will be able to debug the cause of the fatal
error.
+ The single most important thing to find out when Emacs aborts or
+ crashes is where did that happen in the Emacs code. This is called
+ "backtrace".
+
+ Emacs on Windows uses more than one thread. When Emacs aborts due
+ to a fatal error, the current thread may not be the application
+ thread running Emacs code. Therefore, to produce a meaningful
+ backtrace from a debugger, you need to instruct it to show the
+ backtrace for every thread. With GDB, you do it like this:
+
+ (gdb) thread apply all backtrace
+
+ To run Emacs under a debugger to begin with, simply start it from
+ the debugger. With GDB, chdir to the `src' directory (if you have
+ the source tree) or to a directory with the `.gdbinit' file (if you
+ don't have the source tree), and type these commands:
+
+ C:\whatever\src> gdb x:\path\to\emacs.exe
+ (gdb) run <ARGUMENTS TO EMACS>
+
+ Thereafter, use Emacs as usual; you can minimize the debugger
+ window, if you like. The debugger will take control if and when
+ Emacs crashes.
+
Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that reflects
their names in lisp. The names of the C routines are the lisp names
prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to underscores. For