1 Building and Installing Emacs
2 on Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/98/ME
4 Copyright (c) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end of the file for copying permissions.
7 If you used WinZip to unpack the distribution, we suggest to
8 remove the files and unpack again with a different program!
9 WinZip is known to create some subtle and hard to debug problems,
10 such as converting files to DOS CR-LF format, not creating empty
11 directories, etc. We suggest to use djtarnt.exe from the GNU FTP
14 To compile Emacs, you will need either Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 or
15 later and nmake, or a Windows port of GCC 2.95 or later with Mingw
16 and W32 API support and a port of GNU make. You can use the Cygwin
17 ports of GCC, but Emacs requires the Mingw headers and libraries to
20 If you build Emacs on Windows 9X or ME, not on Windows 2000 or
21 Windows NT, we suggest to install the Cygwin port of Bash.
23 Please see http://www.mingw.org for pointers to GCC/Mingw binaries.
25 For reference, here is a list of which builds of GNU make are known
26 to work or not, and whether they work in the presence and/or absence
27 of sh.exe, the Cygwin port of Bash.
31 cygwin b20.1 make (3.75): okay[1] fails[2]
32 MSVC compiled gmake 3.77: okay okay
33 MSVC compiled gmake 3.78.1: okay okay
34 MSVC compiled gmake 3.79.1: okay okay
35 mingw32/gcc-2.92.2 make (3.77): okay okay[4]
36 cygwin compiled gmake 3.77: okay[1] fails[2]
37 cygwin compiled gmake 3.78.1: okay fails[2]
38 cygwin compiled gmake 3.79.1: couldn't build make[3]
42 [1] doesn't cope with makefiles with DOS line endings, so must mount
43 emacs source with text!=binary.
44 [2] fails when needs to invoke shell commands; okay invoking gcc etc.
45 [3] requires LC_MESSAGES support to build; maybe 2.95.x update to
47 [4] may fail on Windows 9X and Windows ME; if so, install Bash.
51 Configuration of Emacs is now handled by running configure.bat in the
52 nt subdirectory. It will detect which compiler you have available,
53 and generate makefiles accordingly. You can override the compiler
54 detection, and control optimization and debug settings, by specifying
55 options on the command line when invoking configure.
57 To configure Emacs to build with GCC or MSVC, whichever is available,
58 simply change to the nt subdirectory and run `configure' with no
59 options. To see what options are available, run `configure --help'.
61 N.B. It is normal to see a few error messages output while configure
62 is running, when gcc support is being tested. These cannot be
63 surpressed because of limitations in the Windows 9x command.com shell.
67 After running configure, simply run the appropriate `make' program for
68 your compiler to build Emacs. For MSVC, this is nmake; for GCC, it is
71 As the files are compiled, you will see some warning messages
72 declaring that some functions don't return a value, or that some data
73 conversions will be lossy, etc. You can safely ignore these messages.
74 The warnings may be fixed in the main FSF source at some point, but
75 until then we will just live with them.
79 To install Emacs after it has compiled, simply run `nmake install'
80 or `make install', depending on which version of the Make utility
83 By default, Emacs will be installed in the location where it was
84 built, but a different location can be specified either using the
85 --prefix option to configure, or by setting INSTALL_DIR when running
88 make install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs
90 (for `nmake', type "nmake install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs" instead).
92 The install process will run addpm to setup the registry entries, and
93 to create a Start menu icon for Emacs.
97 The main problems that are likely to be encountered when building
98 Emacs stem from using an old version of GCC, or old Mingw or W32 API
99 headers. Additionally, cygwin ports of GNU make may require the Emacs
100 source tree to be mounted with text!=binary, because the makefiles
101 generated by configure.bat necessarily use DOS line endings. Also,
102 cygwin ports of make must run in UNIX mode, either by specifying
103 --unix on the command line, or MAKE_MODE=UNIX in the environment.
105 When configure runs, it attempts to detect when GCC itself, or the
106 headers it is using, are not suitable for building Emacs. GCC version
107 2.95 or later is needed, because that is when the Windows port gained
108 sufficient support for anonymous structs and unions to cope with some
109 definitions from winnt.h that are used by addsection.c. The W32 API
110 headers that come with Cygwin b20.1 are incomplete, and do not include
111 some definitions required by addsection.c, for instance. Also, older
112 releases of the W32 API headers from Anders Norlander contain a typo
113 in the definition of IMAGE_FIRST_SECTION in winnt.h, which
114 addsection.c relies on. Versions of w32api-xxx.zip from at least
115 1999-11-18 onwards are okay.
117 If configure succeeds, but make fails, install the Cygwin port of
118 Bash, even if the table above indicates that Emacs should be able to
119 build without sh.exe. (Some versions of Windows shells are too dumb
120 for Makefile's used by Emacs.)
122 If you are using a recent Cygwin build of GCC, such as Cygwin version
123 1.1.8, you may need to specify some extra compiler flags like so:
125 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
128 We will attempt to auto-detect the need for these flags in a future
133 You should be able to debug Emacs using the debugger that is
134 appropriate for the compiler you used, namely DevStudio or Windbg if
135 compiled with MSVC, or gdb if compiled with gcc.
137 Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that reflects
138 their names in lisp. The names of the C routines are the lisp names
139 prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to underscores. For
140 example, the function call-process is implemented in C by
141 Fcall_process. Similarly, lisp variables are prefixed with 'V', again
142 with dashes converted to underscores. These conventions enable you to
143 easily set breakpoints or examine familiar lisp variables by name.
145 Since Emacs data is often in the form of a lisp object, and the
146 Lisp_Object type is difficult to examine manually in the MSVC
147 debugger, Emacs provides a helper routine called debug_print that
148 prints out a readable representation of a Lisp_Object. (If you are
149 using gdb, there is a .gdbinit file in the src directory which
150 provides definitions that are useful for examining lisp objects. The
151 following tips are mainly of interest when using MSVC.) The output
152 from debug_print is sent to stderr, and to the debugger via the
153 OutputDebugString routine. The output sent to stderr should be
154 displayed in the console window that was opened when the emacs.exe
155 executable was started. The output sent to the debugger should be
156 displayed in its "Debug" output window.
158 When you are in the process of debugging Emacs and you would like to
159 examine the contents of a Lisp_Object variable, popup the QuickWatch
160 window (QuickWatch has an eyeglass symbol on its button in the
161 toolbar). In the text field at the top of the window, enter
162 debug_print(<variable>) and hit return. For example, start and run
163 Emacs in the debugger until it is waiting for user input. Then click
164 on the Break button in the debugger to halt execution. Emacs should
165 halt in ZwUserGetMessage waiting for an input event. Use the Call
166 Stack window to select the procedure w32_msp_pump up the call stack
167 (see below for why you have to do this). Open the QuickWatch window
168 and enter debug_print(Vexec_path). Evaluating this expression will
169 then print out the contents of the lisp variable exec-path.
171 If QuickWatch reports that the symbol is unknown, then check the call
172 stack in the Call Stack window. If the selected frame in the call
173 stack is not an Emacs procedure, then the debugger won't recognize
174 Emacs symbols. Instead, select a frame that is inside an Emacs
175 procedure and try using debug_print again.
177 If QuickWatch invokes debug_print but nothing happens, then check the
178 thread that is selected in the debugger. If the selected thread is
179 not the last thread to run (the "current" thread), then it cannot be
180 used to execute debug_print. Use the Debug menu to select the current
181 thread and try using debug_print again. Note that the debugger halts
182 execution (e.g., due to a breakpoint) in the context of the current
183 thread, so this should only be a problem if you've explicitly switched
188 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
189 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
190 copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
191 and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
192 for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
194 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
195 of this document, or of portions of it,
196 under the above conditions, provided also that they
197 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them,
198 and that any new or changed statements about the activities
199 of the Free Software Foundation are approved by the Foundation.