1 Building and Installing Emacs on MS-Windows
2 using the MSYS and MinGW tools
4 Copyright (C) 2013-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end of the file for license conditions.
7 The MSYS/MinGW build described here is supported on versions of
8 Windows starting with Windows XP and newer. Building on Windows 2000
9 and Windows 9X is not supported (but the Emacs binary produced by this
10 build will run on Windows 9X and newer systems).
12 Do not use this recipe with Cygwin. For building on Cygwin, use the
13 normal installation instructions, ../INSTALL.
15 For building Emacs using the MinGW64/MSYS2 toolchain, see the
16 instructions in the file INSTALL.W64 in this directory.
18 * For the brave (a.k.a. "impatient"):
20 For those who have a working MSYS/MinGW development environment and
21 are comfortable with running Posix configure scripts, here are the
22 concise instructions for configuring and building the native Windows
23 binary of Emacs with these tools:
25 0. Start the MSYS Bash window. Everything else below is done from
26 that window's Bash prompt.
28 0a. If you are building from the development trunk (as opposed to a
29 release tarball), produce the configure script, by typing from
30 the top-level Emacs source directory:
34 1. If you want to build Emacs outside of the source tree
35 (recommended), create the build directory and chdir there.
37 2. Invoke the configure script:
39 - If you are building outside the source tree:
41 /PATH/TO/EMACS/SOURCE/TREE/configure --prefix=PREFIX ...
43 - If you are building in-place, i.e. inside the source tree:
45 ./configure --prefix=PREFIX ...
47 It is always preferable to use --prefix to configure Emacs for
48 some specific location of its installed tree; the default
49 /usr/local is not suitable for Windows (see the detailed
50 instructions for the reasons). The prefix must be absolute.
52 You can pass other options to the configure script. Here's a
53 typical example (for an in-place debug build):
55 ./configure --prefix=/d/usr/emacs --enable-checking='yes,glyphs' \
58 3. After the configure script finishes, it should display the
59 resulting configuration. After that, type
63 Use "make -j N" if your MSYS Make supports parallel execution;
64 the build will take significantly less time in that case. Here N
65 is the number of simultaneous parallel jobs; use the number of
66 the cores on your system.
68 4. Install the produced binaries:
72 If you want the installation tree to go to a place that is
73 different from the one specified by --prefix, say
75 make install prefix=/where/ever/you/want
79 If these short instructions somehow fail, read the rest of this
82 * Installing Git for Windows
84 Skip this section if you already have Git installed and configured,
85 or if you are building from the release tarball, not from the
86 development repository.
88 Git for Windows is available from this download page:
90 https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/releases
92 That page offers both 32-bit and 64-bit installations; pick the one
93 suitable for your OS. In general, we recommend to install a 64-bit
94 Git if you have a 64-bit Windows system; the 32-bit Git will run on
95 64-bit Windows just fine, but might run into memory problems where
98 During Git installation, be sure to select the "Checkout as-is,
99 commit as-is" option from the "Configure line ending conversions"
100 dialog. Otherwise, Git will convert text files to DOS-style CRLF
101 end-of-line (EOL) format, which will cause subtle problems when
102 building Emacs, because MSYS tools (see below) used to build Emacs
103 use binary file I/O that preserves the CR characters that get in the
104 way of some text-processing tools, like 'makeinfo' and the commands
105 invoked by the autogen.sh script.
107 If you already have Git installed and configured with some other EOL
108 conversion option, you will need to reconfigure it, removing the
109 following variables from all of your .gitconfig files:
115 If you cloned the Emacs directory before changing these config
116 variables, you will have to delete the repository and re-clone it
119 The instructions for cloning the Emacs repository can be found on
120 the Emacs's Savannah project page:
122 https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs
124 * Installing MinGW and MSYS
126 Make sure you carefully read the following two sections in their
127 entirety and install/configure the various packages as instructed.
128 A correct installation makes all the rest almost trivial; a botched
129 installation will likely make you miserable for quite some time.
131 There are two alternatives to installing MinGW + MSYS: using the GUI
132 installer, called mingw-get, provided by the MinGW project, or
133 manual installation. The next two sections describe each one of
136 ** Installing MinGW and MSYS using mingw-get
138 A nice installer, called mingw-get, is available for those who don't
139 like to mess with manual installations. You can download it from
142 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Installer/mingw-get/
144 (This installer only supports packages downloaded from the MinGW
145 site; for the rest you will still need the manual method.)
147 After installing mingw-get, invoke it to install the packages that
148 are already selected by default on the "Select Components" screen of
151 After that, use "mingw-get install PACKAGE" to install the following
155 . mingw-developer-toolkit
157 When the installation ends, perform the post-installation steps
158 described on this page of the MinGW site:
160 http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started
162 in the "After Installing You Should ..." section. These steps are
163 important for making your installation complete, and in particular
164 will produce a desktop shortcut for running the MSYS Bash shell,
165 from which you will configure and build Emacs. Once you've made the
166 shortcut, double-click on it to open the MSYS Bash shell window,
167 where you will proceed with the rest of these instructions.
169 In addition, we suggest to modify your system-wide Path variable to
170 include the 'bin' subdirectory of your top-level MinGW installation
171 directory, the one you specified to mingw-get ("C:\MinGW" by
172 default). This will allow you to invoke the MinGW development
173 tools, like GCC, from the Windows cmd.exe shell windows or from
174 other Windows programs (including Emacs, after you build and install
177 (We recommend that you refrain from installing the MSYS Texinfo
178 package, which is part of msys-base, because it might produce mixed
179 EOL format when installing Info files. Instead, install the MinGW
180 port of Texinfo, see the ezwinports URL below. To uninstall the
181 MSYS Texinfo, after installing it as part of msys-base, invoke the
182 command "mingw-get remove msys-texinfo", or mark "msys-texinfo" for
183 removal in the mingw-get GUI, then select Installation->Apply Changes.)
185 (Similarly, we recommend to refrain from installing the MinGW
186 Autoconf package; instead, install its MSYS build available from the
187 ezwinports site, see below.)
189 At this point, you should be ready to configure and build Emacs in
190 its basic configuration. Skip to the "Generating the configure
191 script" section for the build instructions. If you want to build it
192 with image support and other optional libraries, read about the
193 optional libraries near the end of this document, before you start
194 the build. Also, consider installing additional MinGW packages that
195 are required/recommended, especially if you are building from the
196 development repository, as described in the next section.
198 ** Installing MinGW and MSYS manually
202 You will need to install the MinGW port of GCC and Binutils, and the
203 MinGW runtime and Windows API distributions, to compile Emacs. You
204 can find these on the MinGW download/Base page:
206 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Base/
208 In general, install the latest stable versions of the following
209 MinGW packages from that page: gcc, binutils, mingw-rt, w32api. You
210 only need the 'bin' and the 'dll' tarballs of each of the above.
212 MinGW packages are distributed as .tar.lzma compressed archives. To
213 install the packages manually, we recommend to use the Windows port
214 of the 'bsdtar' program to unpack the tarballs. 'bsdtar' is
215 available as part of the 'libarchive' package from here:
217 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
219 The recommended place to install these packages is a single tree
220 starting from some directory on a drive other than the system drive
221 C:. A typical example would be D:\usr, with D:\usr\bin holding the
222 binaries and DLLs (should be added to your Path environment
223 variable), D:\usr\include holding the include files, D:\usr\lib
224 holding the static and import libraries, D:\usr\share holding docs,
225 message catalogs, and package-specific subdirectories, etc.
227 Having all the headers and libraries in a single place will greatly
228 reduce the number of -I and -L flags you will have to pass to the
229 configure script (see below), as these files will be right where the
230 compiler expects them.
232 We specifically do NOT recommend installing packages below
233 "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Program Files (x86)". These directories
234 are protected on versions of Windows from Vista and on, and you will
235 have difficulties updating and maintaining your installation later,
236 due to UAC elevation prompts, file virtualization, etc. You *have*
239 Additional MinGW packages are required/recommended, especially if
240 you are building from the development repository:
242 . Texinfo (needed to produce the Info manuals when building from
243 the repository, and for "make install")
245 Available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
247 . pkg-config (invoked by the configure script to look for optional
250 Available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
252 . gzip (needed to compress files during "make install")
254 Available from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gzip.htm.
256 Each package might list other packages as prerequisites on its
257 download page (under "Runtime requirements"); download those as
258 well. (Using the mingw-get installer will fetch those prerequisites
259 automatically for you.) A missing prerequisite will manifest itself
260 by the program failing to run and presenting a pop-up dialog that
261 states the missing or incompatible DLL; be sure to find and install
264 Once you think you have MinGW installed, test the installation by
265 building a trivial "hello, world!" program, and make sure that it
266 builds without any error messages and the binary works when run.
270 You will need a reasonably full MSYS installation. MSYS is an
271 environment needed to run the Posix configure scripts and the
272 resulting Makefile's, in order to produce native Windows binaries
273 using the MinGW compiler and runtime libraries. Here's the list of
274 MSYS packages that are required:
276 . All the packages from the MSYS Base distribution, listed here:
278 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/Base/
280 . Additional packages listed below, from the MSYS Extension
283 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/Extension/
291 These should only be needed if you intend to build development
292 versions of Emacs from the repository.
294 . Additional package (needed only if building from the repository):
295 Autoconf. It is available from here:
297 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/autoconf-2.65-msys-bin.zip/download
299 MSYS packages are distributed as .tar.lzma compressed archives. To
300 install the packages manually, we recommend to use the Windows port
301 of the 'bsdtar' program, already mentioned above.
303 MSYS packages should be installed in a separate tree from MinGW.
304 For example, use D:\MSYS or D:\usr\MSYS as the top-level directory
305 from which you unpack all of the MSYS packages.
307 After installing Autoconf, make sure any of the *.m4 files you might
308 have in your MinGW installation also exist in the MSYS installation
309 tree, in the share/aclocal directory. Those *.m4 files which exist
310 in the MinGW tree, but not in the MSYS tree should be copied there.
312 If/when you are confident in your MinGW/MSYS installation, and want
313 to speed up the builds, we recommend installing a pre-release
314 version of Make from here:
316 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/external-binary-packages/
318 These are snapshot builds of many packages, but you only need
319 make.exe from there. The advantage of this make.exe is that it
320 supports parallel builds, so you can use "make -j N" to considerably
321 speed up your builds.
323 Several users reported that MSYS 1.0.18 causes Make to hang in
324 parallel builds. If you bump into this, we suggest to downgrade to
325 MSYS 1.0.17, which doesn't have that problem.
327 For each of these packages, install the 'bin' and 'dll' tarballs of
328 their latest stable releases. If there's an 'ext' tarball (e.g.,
329 msysCORE and Coreutils have it), download and install those as well.
331 Each package might list other packages as prerequisites on its
332 download page (under "Runtime requirements"); download those as
333 well. (Using the mingw-get installer will fetch those prerequisites
334 automatically for you.) A missing prerequisite will manifest itself
335 by the program failing to run and presenting a pop-up dialog that
336 states the missing or incompatible DLL; be sure to find and install
339 Do NOT add the MSYS bin directory to your Windows Path! Only the
340 MinGW bin directory should be on Path. When you install MSYS, it
341 creates a shortcut on your desktop that invokes the MSYS Bash shell
342 in a Command Prompt window; that shell is already set up so that the
343 MSYS bin directory is on PATH ahead of any other directory. Thus,
344 Bash will find MSYS executables first, which is exactly what you
347 * Starting the MSYS Bash shell
349 For most reliable and predictable results, we recommend to start
350 Bash by clicking the "MSYS" icon on your desktop. That icon is
351 created when you install MSYS, and using it is the official way of
352 running the MSYS tools.
354 For other methods of starting the shell, make sure Bash is invoked
355 with the "--login" command-line switch.
357 When the shell window opens and you get the shell prompt, change to
358 the directory where you intend to build Emacs.
360 At this point, you are ready to build Emacs in its basic
361 configuration. If you want to build it with image support and other
362 optional libraries, read about that near the end of this document.
364 * Generating the configure script
366 If you are building a release or pretest tarball, skip this section,
367 because the configure script is already present in the tarball.
369 To build a development snapshot from the Emacs repository,
370 you will first need to generate the configure script and a few other
371 auto-generated files.
373 To generate the configure script, type this at the MSYS Bash prompt
374 from the top-level directory of the Emacs source tree:
378 If successful, this command should produce the following output:
381 Checking whether you have the necessary tools...
382 (Read INSTALL.REPO for more details on building Emacs)
383 Checking for autoconf (need at least version 2.65) ... ok
384 Your system has the required tools.
385 Building aclocal.m4 ...
386 Running 'autoreconf -fi -I m4' ...
387 You can now run './configure'.
389 If the script fails because it cannot find Git, you will need to
390 arrange for the MSYS Bash's PATH to include the Git's 'bin'
391 subdirectory, where there's the git.exe executable.
393 * Configuring Emacs for MinGW:
395 Now it's time to run the configure script. You can do that either
396 from a separate build directory that is outside of the Emacs source
397 tree (recommended), or from inside the source tree. The former is
398 recommended because it allows you to have several different builds,
399 e.g., an optimized build and an unoptimized one, of the same
400 revision of the source tree; the source tree will be left in its
401 pristine state, without any build products.
403 You invoke the configure script like this:
405 /PATH/TO/EMACS/SOURCE/TREE/configure --prefix=PREFIX ...
407 or, if you are building in-place, i.e. inside the source tree:
409 ./configure --prefix=PREFIX ...
411 Here PREFIX is the place where you eventually want to install Emacs
412 once built, e.g. /d/usr. We recommend to always use --prefix when
413 building Emacs on Windows, because the default '/usr/local' is not
414 appropriate for Windows: it will be mapped by MSYS to something like
415 C:\MSYS\local, and it will defeat the purpose of PREFIX, which is to
416 install programs in a single coherent tree resembling Posix systems.
417 Such a single-tree installation makes sure all the other programs
418 and packages ported from GNU or Unix systems will work seamlessly
419 together. Where exactly is the root of that tree on your system is
420 something only you, the user who builds Emacs, can know, and the
421 Emacs build process cannot guess, because usually there's no
422 '/usr/local' directory on any drive on Windows systems.
424 Do NOT use Windows-style x:/foo/bar file names on the configure
425 script command line; use the MSYS-style /x/foo/bar instead. Using
426 Windows-style file names was reported to cause subtle and hard to
427 figure out problems during the build. This applies both to the
428 command switches, such as --prefix=, and to the absolute file name
429 of 'configure', if you are building outside of the source tree.
431 You can pass additional options to the configure script, for the
436 As explained in the help text, you may need to tell the script what
437 are the optional flags to invoke the compiler. This is needed if
438 some of your headers and libraries, e.g., those belonging to
439 optional image libraries, are installed in places where the compiler
440 normally doesn't look for them. (Remember that advice above to
441 avoid such situations? here's is where you will start paying for
442 disregarding that recommendation.) For example, if you have libpng
443 headers in C:\emacs\libs\libpng-1.2.37-lib\include and jpeg library
444 headers in C:\emacs\libs\jpeg-6b-4-lib\include, you will need to say
447 CPPFLAGS='-I/c/emacs/libs/libpng-1.2.37-lib/include -I/c/emacs/libs/jpeg-6b-4-lib/include' ./configure --prefix=PREFIX
449 which is quite a mouth-full, especially if you have more directories
450 to specify... Perhaps you may wish to revisit your installation
453 If you have a global site-lisp directory from previous Emacs
454 installation, and you want Emacs to continue using it, specify it
455 via the --enable-locallisppath switch to 'configure', like this:
457 ./configure --prefix=PREFIX --enable-locallisppath="/d/usr/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp:/d/wherever/site-lisp"
459 Use the normal MSYS /d/foo/bar style to specify directories by their
462 A few frequently used options are needed when you want to produce an
463 unoptimized binary with runtime checks enabled:
465 ./configure --prefix=PREFIX --enable-checking='yes,glyphs' \
468 Once invoked, the configure script will run for some time, and, if
469 successful, will eventually produce a summary of the configuration
472 Configured for 'i686-pc-mingw32'.
474 Where should the build process find the source code? /path/to/emacs/sources
475 What compiler should emacs be built with? gcc -std=gnu99 -O0 -g3
476 Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc? no
477 (The GNU allocators don't work with this system configuration.)
478 Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers? no
479 Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation? yes
480 What window system should Emacs use? w32
481 What toolkit should Emacs use? none
482 Where do we find X Windows header files? NONE
483 Where do we find X Windows libraries? NONE
484 Does Emacs use -lXaw3d? no
485 Does Emacs use -lXpm? yes
486 Does Emacs use -ljpeg? yes
487 Does Emacs use -ltiff? yes
488 Does Emacs use a gif library? yes
489 Does Emacs use a png library? yes
490 Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2? yes
491 Does Emacs use cairo? no
492 Does Emacs use -llcms2? yes
493 Does Emacs use imagemagick? no
494 Does Emacs support sound? no
495 Does Emacs use -lgpm? no
496 Does Emacs use -ldbus? no
497 Does Emacs use -lgconf? no
498 Does Emacs use GSettings? no
499 Does Emacs use a file notification library? yes (w32)
500 Does Emacs use access control lists? yes
501 Does Emacs use -lselinux? no
502 Does Emacs use -lgnutls? yes
503 Does Emacs use -lxml2? yes
504 Does Emacs use -lfreetype? no
505 Does Emacs use HarfBuzz? yes
506 Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt? no
507 Does Emacs use -lotf? no
508 Does Emacs use -lxft? no
509 Does Emacs use -lsystemd? no
510 Does Emacs use -ljansson? yes
511 Does Emacs use the GMP library? yes
512 Does Emacs directly use zlib? yes
513 Does Emacs have dynamic modules support? yes
514 Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars? yes
515 Does Emacs support Xwidgets? no
516 Does Emacs have threading support in lisp? yes
517 Does Emacs support the portable dumper? yes
518 Does Emacs support the legacy unexec dumping? no
519 Which dumping strategy does Emacs use? pdumper
521 You are almost there, hang on.
523 If the output is significantly different, or if configure finishes
524 prematurely and displays some error message, you should examine the
525 configuration log in config.log and find the reason for the failure.
527 Once you succeeded in configuring Emacs, and just want to rebuild it
528 after updating your local repository from the main repository, you
529 don't need to re-run the configure script manually, unless you want
530 to change the configure-time options. Just typing "make" will
531 re-run configure if necessary with the exact same options you
532 specified originally, and then go on to invoking Make, described
537 This is simple: just type "make" and sit back, watching the fun.
539 If you installed a snapshot build of Make, the build will be much
540 faster if you type "make -j N" instead, where N is the number of
541 independent processing units on your machine. E.g., on a core i7
542 system try using N of 6 or even 8. (If this hangs, see the notes
543 above about downgrading to MSYS 1.0.17.)
545 When Make finishes, you can install the produced binaries:
549 or, if you want the installed tree to go in a place different from
550 the configured one, type
552 make install prefix=WHEREVER
554 Congrats! You have built and installed your own Emacs!
558 The following make targets may be used by users building the source
559 distribution, or users who have checked out of the repository after
560 an initial bootstrapping.
563 Builds Emacs from the available sources and pre-compiled lisp files.
566 Installs the built programs and the auxiliary files.
569 Removes object and executable files produced by the build process in
570 the current configuration. After "make clean", you can rebuild with
571 the same configuration using make. useful when you want to be sure
572 that all of the products are built from coherent sources.
575 In addition to the files removed by make clean, this also removes
576 Makefiles and other generated files to get back to the state of a
577 freshly unpacked source distribution. After make distclean, it is
578 necessary to run the configure script followed by "make", in order
581 The following targets are intended only for use with the repository
585 Removes all the auto-generated files and all the *.elc byte-compiled
586 files, and builds Emacs from scratch. Useful when some change in
587 basic Emacs functionality makes byte compilation of updated files
590 make maintainer-clean
591 Removes everything that can be recreated, including compiled Lisp
592 files, to get back to the state of a fresh repository tree. After make
593 maintainer-clean, it is necessary to run configure and "make" or
594 "make bootstrap" to rebuild. Occasionally it may be necessary to
595 run this target after an update.
597 * Optional image library support
599 In addition to its "native" image formats (pbm and xbm), Emacs can
600 handle other image types: xpm, tiff, gif, png, jpeg and experimental
603 To build Emacs with support for them, the corresponding headers must
604 be in the include path and libraries should be where the linker
605 looks for them, when the configure script is run. If needed, this
606 can be set up using the CPPFLAGS and CFLAGS variable specified on
607 the configure command line. The configure script will report
608 whether it was able to detect the headers and libraries. If the
609 results of this testing appear to be incorrect, please look for
610 details in the file config.log: it will show the failed test
611 programs and compiler error messages that should explain what is
612 wrong. (Usually, any such failures happen because some headers are
613 missing due to bad packaging of the image support libraries.)
615 Note that any file path passed to the compiler or linker must use
616 forward slashes, or double each backslash, as that is how Bash
619 If the configure script finds the necessary headers and libraries,
620 but they are for some reason incompatible, or if you want to omit
621 support for some image library that is installed on your system for
622 some other reason, use the --without-PACKAGE option to configure,
623 such as --without-gif to omit GIF, --without-tiff to omit TIFF, etc.
624 Passing the --help option to the configure script displays all of
625 the supported --without-PACKAGE options.
627 To use the external image support, the DLLs implementing the
628 functionality must be found when Emacs first needs them, either on the
629 PATH, or in the same directory as emacs.exe. Failure to find a
630 library is not an error; the associated image format will simply be
631 unavailable. Note that once Emacs has determined that a library can
632 not be found, there's no way to force it to try again, other than
633 restarting. See the variable `dynamic-library-alist' to configure the
634 expected names of the libraries.
636 Some image libraries have dependencies on one another, or on zlib.
637 For example, tiff support depends on the jpeg library. If you did not
638 compile the libraries yourself, you must make sure that any dependency
639 is in the PATH or otherwise accessible and that the binaries are
640 compatible (for example, that they were built with the same compiler).
642 To support XPM images (required for color tool-bar icons), you will
643 need the libXpm library. It is available from the ezwinports site,
644 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/ and from
645 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/.
647 For PNG images, we recommend to use versions 1.4.x and later of
648 libpng, because previous versions had security issues. You can find
649 precompiled libraries and headers on the ezwinports site and on
652 Versions 1.4.0 and later of libpng are binary incompatible with
653 earlier versions, so Emacs will only look for libpng libraries which
654 are compatible with the version it was compiled against. That
655 version is given by the value of the Lisp variable `libpng-version';
656 e.g., 10403 means version 1.4.3. The variable `dynamic-library-alist'
657 is automatically set to name only those DLL names that are known to
658 be compatible with the version given by `libpng-version'. If PNG
659 support does not work for you even though you have the support DLL
660 installed, check the name of the installed DLL against
661 `dynamic-library-alist' and the value of `libpng-version', and
662 download compatible DLLs if needed.
664 For GIF images, we recommend to use versions 5.0.0 or later of
665 giflib, as it is much enhanced wrt previous versions. You can find
666 precompiled binaries and headers for giflib on the ezwinports site,
667 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/ and on
668 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/.
670 Version 5.0.0 and later of giflib are binary incompatible with
671 previous versions (the signatures of several functions have
672 changed), so Emacs will only look for giflib libraries that are
673 compatible with the version it was compiled against. Similar to
674 libpng, that version is given by the value of the Lisp variable
675 `libgif-version'; e.g., 50005 means version 5.0.5. The variable
676 `dynamic-library-alist' is automatically set to name only those DLL
677 libraries that are known to be compatible with the version given by
680 For JPEG images, you will need libjpeg 6b or later, which will be
681 called libjpeg-N.dll, jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, or jpeg.dll. You can
682 find these on the ezwinports site and on ftp.gnu.org.
684 TIFF images require libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called
685 libtiffN.dll or libtiff-N.dll or libtiff.dll. These can be found on
688 Pre-built versions of librsvg and its dependencies can be found
691 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
693 This site includes a minimal (as much as possible for librsvg)
694 build of the library and its dependencies; it is also more
695 up-to-date with the latest upstream versions. However, it
696 currently only offers 32-bit builds. For building Emacs, you need
697 to download from this site all of the following *-bin.zip
700 librsvg, gdk-pixbuf, cairo, glib
702 The 'bin' archives on this site include both header files and the
703 libraries needed for building with librsvg and for running Emacs.
704 The librsvg archive includes all the shared libraries needed to
705 run Emacs with SVG support; the other 3 packages are required
706 because the compiler needs to see their header files when building
709 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/
711 More fat ports, from the MSYS2 project.
713 To use librsvg at runtime, ensure that librsvg and its dependencies
714 are on your PATH, or in the same directory as the emacs.exe binary.
715 If you are downloading from the ezwinports site, you only need to
716 install a single archive, librsvg-X.Y.Z-w32-bin.zip, which includes
717 all the dependency DLLs.
719 If you think you've got all the dependencies and SVG support is
720 still not working, check your PATH for other libraries that shadow
721 the ones you downloaded. Libraries of the same name from different
722 sources may not be compatible, this problem was encountered in the
723 past, e.g., with libcroco from gnome.org.
725 If you can see etc/images/splash.svg, then you have managed to get
726 SVG support working. Congratulations for making it through DLL hell
727 to this point. For some SVG images, you'll probably see error
728 messages from Glib about failed assertions, or warnings from Pango
729 about failure to load fonts (installing the missing fonts should fix
730 the latter kind of problems). Problems have been observed in some
731 images that contain text, they seem to be a problem in the Windows
732 port of Pango, or maybe a problem with the way Cairo or librsvg is
733 using it that doesn't show up on other platforms. However, Emacs
734 should not crash due to these issues. If you eventually find the
735 SVG support too unstable to your taste, you can rebuild Emacs
736 without it by specifying the --without-rsvg switch to the configure
739 Binaries for the other image libraries can be found on the
740 ezwinports site or at the GnuWin32 project (the latter are generally
741 very old, so not recommended). Note specifically that, due to some
742 packaging snafus in the GnuWin32-supplied image libraries, you will
743 need to download _source_ packages for some of the libraries in
744 order to get the header files necessary for building Emacs with
747 * Optional GnuTLS support
749 To compile with GnuTLS, you will need pkg-config to be installed, as
750 the configure script invokes pkg-config to find out which compiler
751 switches to use for GnuTLS. See above for the URL where you can
752 find pkg-config for Windows.
754 You will also need to install the p11-kit package, which is a
755 dependency of GnuTLS, and its header files are needed for
756 compilation of programs that use GnuTLS. You can find p11-kit on
757 the same site as GnuTLS, see the URL below.
759 If the configure script finds the GnuTLS header files and libraries
760 on your system, Emacs is built with GnuTLS support by default; to
761 avoid that you can pass the argument --without-gnutls.
763 In order to support GnuTLS at runtime, a GnuTLS-enabled Emacs must
764 be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so
765 is not an error, but GnuTLS won't be available to the running
768 You can get pre-built binaries (including any required DLL and the
769 header files) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
770 and on https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/.
772 * Optional libxml2 support
774 To compile with libxml2, you will need pkg-config to be installed,
775 as the configure script invokes pkg-config to find out which
776 compiler switches to use for libxml2. See above for the URL where
777 you can find pkg-config for Windows.
779 If the configure script finds the libxml2 header files and libraries
780 on your system, Emacs is built with libxml2 support by default; to
781 avoid that you can pass the argument --without-libxml2.
783 In order to support libxml2 at runtime, a libxml2-enabled Emacs must
784 be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so
785 is not an error, but libxml2 features won't be available to the
788 One place where you can get pre-built Windows binaries of libxml2
789 (including any required DLL and the header files) is here:
791 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
792 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/
794 For runtime support of libxml2, you will also need to install the
795 libiconv "development" tarball, because the libiconv headers need to
796 be available to the compiler when you compile with libxml2 support.
797 A MinGW port of libiconv can be found on the MinGW site:
799 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Base/libiconv/
801 You need the libiconv-X.Y.Z-N-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma tarball from that
804 * Optional support for decompressing text
806 Emacs can decompress text if compiled with the zlib library.
807 Prebuilt binaries of zlib DLL (for 32-bit builds of Emacs) are
808 available from the ezwinports site and on ftp.gnu.org; see above for
811 (This library is also a prerequisite for several image libraries, so
812 you may already have it; look for zlib1.dll or libz-1.dll.)
814 * Optional support for lcms2 library
816 Emacs can expose some capabilities of the Little CMS color
817 management engine to Lisp programs using the lcms2 library.
818 Prebuilt binaries of lcms2 DLL (for 32-bit builds of Emacs) are
819 available from the ezwinports site and from the MSYS2 project.
821 * Optional support for JSON
823 Emacs can provide built-in support for JSON parsing and
824 serialization using the libjansson library. Prebuilt binaries of
825 the libjansson DLL (for 32-bit builds of Emacs) are available from
826 the ezwinports site and from the MSYS2 project.
828 * Optional support for HarfBuzzz shaping library
830 Emacs supports display of complex scripts and Arabic shaping. The
831 preferred library for that is HarfBuzz; prebuilt binaries are
832 available from the ezwinports site (for 32-bit builds of Emacs) and
833 from the MSYS2 project. If HarfBuzz is not available, Emacs will
834 use the Uniscribe shaping engine that is part of MS-Windows.
837 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
839 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
840 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
841 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
842 (at your option) any later version.
844 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
845 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
846 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
847 GNU General Public License for more details.
849 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
850 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.