-Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
+Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.
Building and Installing Emacs from CVS
+If this is the first time you go through it, you'll need to configure
+before bootstrapping:
+
+ $ ./configure
+
Some of the files that are included in the Emacs tarball, such as
byte-compiled Lisp files, are not stored in the CVS repository.
Therefore, to build from CVS you must run "make bootstrap"
instead of just "make":
- $ ./configure
+ $ cvs update -dP
$ make bootstrap
-The bootstrap process makes sure all necessary files are rebuilt
-before it builds the final Emacs binary.
-
-If 'make bootstrap' fails, it may be necessary to do 'make maintainer-clean'
-followed by configure before trying it again. (Occasionally the loaddefs.el
-file gets into a bad state due to changes in the Lisp libraries; this procedure
-forces it to be regenerated.)
-
Normally, it is not necessary to use "make bootstrap" after every CVS
-update. Unless there are problems, we suggest using the following
-alternative procedure after you have done "make bootstrap" at least
-once:
+update. "make" should work in 90% of the cases and be much quicker.
- $ ./configure
- $ make
- $ cd lisp
- $ make recompile EMACS=../src/emacs
- $ cd ..
$ make
(If you want to install the Emacs binary, type "make install" instead
of "make" in the last command.)
-Occasionally the file "lisp/loaddefs.el" (and similar *-loaddefs.el
-files in some subdirectories of lisp/, e.g. mh-e/ and calendar/) will
-need to be updated to reflect new autoloaded functions. If you see
-errors (rather than warnings) about undefined lisp functions during
-compilation, that may be the reason. Another symptom may be an error
-saying that "loaddefs.el" could not be found; this is due to a change
-in the way loaddefs.el was handled in CVS, and should only happen
-once, for users that are updating old CVS trees. Finally, sometimes
-there can be build failures related to *loaddefs.el. In that case,
-delete them before following the instructions below to update them.
+Occasionally the file "lisp/loaddefs.el" (and similar automatically
+generated files, such as esh-groups.el, and *-loaddefs.el in some
+subdirectories of lisp/, e.g. mh-e/ and calendar/) will need to be
+updated to reflect new autoloaded functions. If you see errors (rather
+than warnings) about undefined lisp functions during compilation, that
+may be the reason. Another symptom may be an error saying that
+"loaddefs.el" could not be found; this is due to a change in the way
+loaddefs.el was handled in CVS, and should only happen once, for users
+that are updating old CVS trees. Finally, sometimes there can be build
+failures related to *loaddefs.el (e.g. "required feature `esh-groups'
+was not provided"). In that case, follow the instructions below.
To update loaddefs.el (and similar files), do:
$ cd lisp
- $ make autoloads EMACS=../src/emacs
+ $ make autoloads
If either of the above partial procedures fails, try "make bootstrap".
Users of non-Posix systems (MS-Windows etc.) should run the
platform-specific configuration scripts (nt/configure.bat, config.bat,
etc.) before "make bootstrap" or "make"; the rest of the procedure is
-applicable to those systems as well, except that the value of the
-EMACS variable on the Make command line might be different, e.g.,
-../bin/emacs.exe or some such.
+applicable to those systems as well.
Questions, requests, and bug reports about the CVS versions of Emacs
should be sent to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org rather than gnu.emacs.help
or gnu.emacs.bug. Ideally, use M-x report-emacs-bug RET which will
send it to the proper place.
+Because the CVS version of Emacs is a work in progress, it will
+sometimes fail to build. Please wait a day or so (and check the bug
+and development mailing list archives) before reporting such problems.
+In most cases, the problem is known about and is just waiting for
+someone to fix it.
+
Note on using SSH to access the CVS repository from inside Emacs
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