1 Copyright (C) 2001-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2 See the end of the file for license conditions.
4 Emacs version 28.0.91 for MS-Windows
6 This README file describes how to set up and run a precompiled
7 distribution of the latest version of GNU Emacs for MS-Windows. You
8 can find the precompiled distribution on the ftp.gnu.org server and
11 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/
13 This server contains other distributions, including the full Emacs
14 source distribution, as well as older releases of Emacs for Windows.
16 Information on how to compile Emacs from sources on Windows is in
17 the files README and INSTALL in the nt/ sub-directory of the
18 top-level Emacs directory in the source distribution, as is this
19 file under the name README.W32. If you received this file as part
20 of the Emacs source distribution, and are looking for information on
21 how to build Emacs on MS-Windows, please read those 2 files and not
26 There are two binary distributions named
27 emacs-VER-x86_64.zip and emacs-VER-i686.zip,
28 where VER is the Emacs version. These are 64-bit and 32-bit builds,
29 respectively. If you are running a 32-bit version of MS-Windows,
30 you need to install the 32-bit build; users of 64-bit Windows can
31 use either build, but we recommend to install the 64-bit one, as it
32 will be able to edit larger buffers and will generally run faster.
34 The binary distribution has these top-level directories:
43 To install Emacs, simply unpack the binary package into a directory
44 of your choice. If you use the Windows Explorer and its "Extract"
45 action, by default this will be in a top-level directory with the
46 same name as the zip file.
48 Emacs is completely portable. You can create your own shortcut to
49 runemacs.exe and place this wherever you find it convenient (the
50 desktop and/or the Taskbar), or run it from a USB or network drive
51 without copying or installing anything on the machine itself.
53 It is also possible, although not recommended to use the program
54 bin/addpm.exe which will place an icon for Emacs on the start page.
56 * Prerequisites for Windows 9X
58 The 32-bit build supports MS-Windows 9X (Windows 95/98/Me). To run
59 Emacs on these versions of Windows, you will need to have the
60 Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU) installed. It can be downloaded
61 from the Microsoft site, and comes in a form of a single dynamic
62 library called UNICOWS.DLL. If this library is not accessible to
63 Emacs on Windows 9X, it will pop up a dialog saying that it cannot
64 find the UNICOWS library, and will refuse to start up.
68 To run Emacs, simply select Emacs from the Start Menu, or invoke
69 runemacs.exe directly from Explorer or from a command prompt. This
70 will start Emacs in its default GUI mode, ready to use. If you have
71 never used Emacs before, you should follow the tutorial at this
72 point (select Emacs Tutorial from the Help menu), since Emacs is
73 quite different from ordinary Windows applications in many respects.
75 If you want to use Emacs in tty or character mode within a command
76 window, you can start it by typing "emacs -nw" at the command prompt.
77 (Obviously, you need to ensure that the Emacs bin subdirectory is in
78 your Path first, or specify the path to emacs.exe.) The -nw
79 (non-windowed) mode of operation is most useful if you have a telnet
80 server on your machine, allowing you to run Emacs remotely.
84 Emacs comes with the following executable files in the bin directory.
86 + emacs.exe - The main Emacs executable. As this is designed to run
87 as both a text-mode application (emacs -nw) and as a GUI application,
88 it will pop up a command prompt window if run directly from Explorer.
90 + runemacs.exe - A wrapper for running Emacs as a GUI application
91 without popping up a command prompt window. If you create a
92 desktop shortcut for invoking Emacs, make it point to this
93 executable, not to emacs.exe. If you pin Emacs to the task bar,
94 edit the properties of the pinned shortcut (with Shift-right mouse
95 click) to point to this executable.
97 + emacsclient.exe - A command-line client program that can
98 communicate with a running Emacs process. See the `Emacs Server'
99 node of the Emacs manual.
101 + emacsclientw.exe - A version of emacsclient that does not open
102 a command-line window.
104 + addpm.exe - A basic installer that adds Emacs to "Start" menus and
105 adds Emacs-related entries to the Windows Registry.
107 + ctags.exe, etags.exe - Tools for generating tag files. See the
108 `Tags' node of the Emacs manual.
110 + ebrowse.exe - A tool for generating C++ browse information. See the
113 Several helper programs are in a version-specific subdirectory of
114 the libexec directory:
116 + cmdproxy.exe - Used internally by Emacs to work around problems with
117 the native shells in various versions of Windows.
119 + ddeclient.exe - A tool for interacting with DDE servers. To be
120 invoked as "ddeclient SERVER [TOPIC]", where SERVER is the DDE
121 server name, and sends each line of its standard input to the DDE
122 server using the DdeClientTransaction API. This program is
123 supposed to be invoked via the 'call-process-region' Emacs
126 + hexl.exe - A tool for producing hex dumps of binary files. See the
127 `Editing Binary Files' node of the Emacs manual.
129 + movemail.exe - A helper application for safely moving mail from
130 a mail spool or POP server to a local user mailbox. See the
131 `Movemail' node of the Emacs manual.
133 + profile.exe - A helper program that generates periodic events for
134 profiling Emacs Lisp code.
136 + update-game-score.exe - A utility for updating the score files of
139 * Emacs without optional dependencies
141 The files emacs-VER-x86_64.zip and emacs-VER-i686.zip contain a
142 large number of optional dependencies for Emacs.
144 Emacs has a number of optional features which use these additional
145 dependencies. They enable support for the following:
147 - displaying inline images of many types (PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, SVG)
148 - SSL/TLS secure network communications (HTTPS, IMAPS, etc.)
149 - HTML and XML parsing (necessary for the built-in EWW browser)
150 - built-in decompression of compressed text
152 If you do not want these files (if you have them already for
153 instance, or you want the smallest possible Emacs), then you may use
154 the files emacs-VER-x86_64-no-deps.zip or
155 emacs-VER-i686-no-deps.zip. The dependency files are also available
156 as emacs-MVER-x86_64-deps.zip and emacs-MVER-i686-deps.zip. Source
157 code for these dependencies is available as
158 emacs-26-deps-mingw-w64-src.zip.
160 All distributions of Emacs have built in support for XBM and
161 PPM/PGM/PBM images, and the libXpm library is bundled, providing XPM
162 support (required for color toolbar icons and splash screen).
163 Source for libXpm should be available from the same place from which
164 you got this binary distribution.
166 * Installing Emacs with an existing MSYS2 installation
168 You may also use Emacs with an existing MSYS2 installation by
169 unpacking the emacs-VER-x86_64-no-deps.zip over the MSYS2
170 distribution. You should not use the emacs-VER-x86_64.zip from this
171 site, as this will overwrite MSYS2 files (the dependency bundle
172 derives from MSYS2, but will be from a different version). You can
173 then use the 'pacman' utility to install dependencies.
175 Some of the optional libraries need to be of certain versions to
176 work with your Emacs binary. Make sure you install those versions
177 of dependencies, and no others. Emacs variables such as
178 libpng-version and libjpeg-version tell what versions of the
179 corresponding libraries are expected by Emacs. (We recommend that
180 you use the dependency bundle, where these issues are always
183 To install the optional libraries, start the MSYS2 Bash window and
184 type the following command:
188 where PACKAGES is the list of packages you want to install. The
189 full list is as follows:
191 mingw-w64-x86_64-giflib
192 mingw-w64-x86_64-gnutls
193 mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo
194 mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng
195 mingw-w64-x86_64-librsvg
196 mingw-w64-x86_64-libtiff
197 mingw-w64-x86_64-libxml2
198 mingw-w64-x86_64-xpm-nox
199 mingw-w64-x86_64-lcms2
201 You can type any subset of this list. When asked whether to proceed
202 with installation, answer Y.
204 Alternatively, you could install the packages manually from this
207 https://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/REPOS/MINGW/x86_64/
209 However, the packages there are not self-contained, so you will need
210 to manually download all their dependencies as well.
214 If you should need to uninstall Emacs, simply delete all the files
215 and subdirectories from the directory where it was unpacked (Emacs
216 does not install or update any files in system directories or
219 If you ran the addpm.exe program to create the Start menu icon, this
220 can be removed by right-clicking and "Uninstall".
222 Finally, addpm.exe also creates a few registry entries; these can be
223 safely left, but if you really wish to remove them, all of the
224 settings are written under the Software\GNU\Emacs key in
225 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, or if you didn't have administrator privileges
226 when you installed, the same key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Just delete
227 the whole Software\GNU\Emacs key.
231 Some known problems and their solutions can be found in the file
232 etc\PROBLEMS in the unpacked Emacs distribution.
236 Some virus scanners interfere with Emacs' use of subprocesses. If you
237 are unable to use subprocesses and you use Dr. Solomon's WinGuard or
238 McAfee's Vshield, turn off "Scan all files" (WinGuard) or "boot sector
239 scanning" (McAfee exclusion properties).
243 On Windows 9X, make sure you have the UNICOWS.DLL library either in
244 the same directory where you have emacs.exe or in the directory
245 where system-wide DLLs are kept.
247 * Further information
249 The Emacs User manual describes Windows-specific issues in the
250 appendix named "Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS". You can read
251 it in Emacs by typing
253 C-h r g Microsoft Windows RET
255 This appendix is also available (as part of the entire manual) at
257 https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html#Microsoft-Windows
259 In addition to the manual, there is a mailing list for help with
262 https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
264 To ask questions on this mailing list, send email to
265 help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
267 A mailing list for issues specifically related to the MS-Windows port
270 https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows
272 To ask questions on this mailing list, send email to
273 help-emacs-windows@gnu.org.
277 If you encounter a bug in this port of Emacs, we would like to hear
278 about it. First check the FAQ on the web page above to see if the bug
279 is already known and if there are any workarounds. Then check whether
280 the bug has something to do with code in your `.emacs' file, e.g. by
281 invoking Emacs with the "-Q" option.
283 If you decide that it is a bug in Emacs, use the built in bug
284 reporting facility to report it (from the menu: Help -> Send Bug Report).
285 If you have not yet configured Emacs for mail, then when you press
286 C-c C-c to send the report, it will ask you to paste the text of the
287 report into your mail client. If the bug is related to subprocesses,
288 also specify which shell you are using (e.g., include the values of
289 `shell-file-name' and `explicit-shell-file-name' in your message).
294 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
296 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
297 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
298 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
299 (at your option) any later version.
301 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
302 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
303 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
304 GNU General Public License for more details.
306 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
307 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.