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1 Building and Installing Emacs
2 on Windows NT and Windows 95
4 You need a compiler package to build and install Emacs on NT or Win95.
5 If you don't have one, precompiled versions are available in
6 ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu/pub/ntemacs/<version>.
8 Configuring:
10 (1) In previous versions, you needed to edit makefile.def
11 to reflect the compiler package that you are using. You should no
12 longer have to do this if you have defined the INCLUDE and LIB
13 environment variables, as is customary for use with Windows compilers.
14 (Unless you are using MSVCNT 1.1, in which case you will need
15 to set MSVCNT11 to be a non-zero value at the top of makefile.def.)
17 (2) Choose the directory into which Emacs will be installed, and
18 edit makefile.def to define INSTALL_DIR to be this directory.
19 (Alternatively, if you have INSTALL_DIR set as an environment
20 variable, the build process will ignore the value in makefile.def
21 and use the value of the environment variable instead.) Note
22 that if it is not installed in the directory in which it is built,
23 the ~16 MB of lisp files will be copied into the installation directory.
25 Also, makefile.def is sometimes unpacked read-only; use
27 > attrib -r makefile.def
29 to make it writable.
31 (3) You may need to edit nt/paths.h to specify some other device
32 instead of `C:'.
34 Building:
36 (4) The target to compile the sources is "all", and is recursive starting
37 one directory up. The makefiles for the NT port are in files named
38 "makefile.nt". To get things started, type in this directory:
40 > nmake -f makefile.nt all
42 or use the ebuild.bat file.
44 When the files are compiled, you will see some warning messages declaring
45 that some functions don't return a value, or that some data conversions
46 will be lossy, etc. You can safely ignore these messages. The warnings
47 may be fixed in the main FSF source at some point, but until then we
48 will just live with them.
50 NOTE: You should not have to edit src\paths.h to get Emacs to run
51 correctly. All of the variables in src\paths.h are configured
52 during start up using the nt\emacs.bat file (which gets installed
53 as bin\emacs.bat -- see below).
55 Installing:
57 (5) Currently, Emacs requires a number of environment variables to be set
58 for it to run correctly. A batch file, emacs.bat, is provided that
59 sets these variables appropriately and then runs the executable
60 (emacs.bat is generated using the definition of INSTALL_DIR in
61 nt\makefile.def and the contents of nt\emacs.bat.in).
63 (6) The install process will install the files necessary to run Emacs in
64 INSTALL_DIR (which may be the directory in which it was built),
65 and create a program manager/folder icon in a folder called GNU Emacs.
66 From this directory, type:
68 > nmake -f makefile.nt install
70 or use the install.bat file.
72 (7) Create the Emacs startup file. This file can be named either .emacs,
73 as on Unix, or _emacs. Note that Emacs requires the environment
74 variable HOME to be set in order for it to locate the startup file.
75 HOME could be set, for example, in the System panel of the Control
76 Panel on NT, or in autoexec.bat on Win95.
78 (8) Start up Emacs.
80 The installation process should have run the addpm.exe program, which
81 does two things. First, it will create a set of registry keys that
82 tell Emacs where to find its support files (lisp, info, etc.).
83 Second, it will create a folder containing an icon linked to
84 runemacs.exe (a wrapper program for invoking Emacs). You can
85 also invoke addpm.exe by hand, giving the absolute directory name
86 of the installation directory as the first argument:
88 addpm.exe %INSTALL_DIR%
90 Now, to run Emacs, simply click on the icon in the newly created
91 folder or invoke runemacs.exe from a command prompt.
93 Another alternative for running Emacs is to use the emacs.bat batch
94 file in the bin directory (this was the traditional method of invoking
95 Emacs). Edit the emacs.bat file to change the emacs_dir environment
96 variable to point to the Emacs installation directory and invoke the
97 emacs.bat file to run Emacs.
99 Note that, on Win95, you are likely to get "Out of environment space"
100 messages when invoking the emacs.bat batch file. The problem is that
101 the console process in which the script is executed runs out of memory
102 in which to set the Emacs environment variables. To get around this
103 problem, create a shortcut icon to the emacs.bat script. Then right
104 click on the icon and select Properties. In the dialog box that pops
105 up, select the Memory tab and then change the Environment memory
106 allocation from "Auto" to "1024". Close the dialog box and then
107 double click on the icon to start Emacs.
109 Debugging:
111 (9) You should be able to debug Emacs using the MSVC debugger as you would
112 any other program. To ensure that Emacs uses the lisp files associated
113 with the source distribution that you are debugging, it is useful
114 to set the Emacs environment variables to point Emacs to the
115 source distribution. You can use the debug.bat batch file in this
116 directory to setup the environment and invoke msdev on the
117 emacs.exe executable.
119 Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that
120 reflects their names in lisp. The names of the C routines are
121 the lisp names prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to
122 underscores. For example, the function call-process is implemented
123 in C by Fcall_process. Similarly, lisp variables are prefixed
124 with 'V', again with dashes converted to underscores. These
125 conventions enable you to easily set breakpoints or examine familiar
126 lisp variables by name.
128 Since Emacs data is often in the form of a lisp object, and the
129 Lisp_Object type is difficult to examine manually in the debugger,
130 Emacs provides a helper routine called debug_print that prints out
131 a readable representation of a Lisp_Object. The output from
132 debug_print is sent to stderr, and to the debugger via the
133 OutputDebugString routine. The output sent to stderr should be
134 displayed in the console window that was opened when the emacs.exe
135 executable was started. The output sent to the debugger should be
136 displayed in its "Debug" output window.
138 When you are in the process of debugging Emacs and you would like
139 to examine the contents of a Lisp_Object variable, popup the
140 QuickWatch window (QuickWatch has an eyeglass symbol on its button
141 in the toolbar). In the text field at the top of the window, enter
142 debug_print(<variable>) and hit return. For example, start
143 and run Emacs in the debugger until it is waiting for user input.
144 Then click on the Break button in the debugger to halt execution.
145 Emacs should halt in ZwUserGetMessage waiting for an input event.
146 Use the Call Stack window to select the procedure w32_msp_pump
147 up the call stack (see below for why you have to do this). Open
148 the QuickWatch window and enter debug_print(Vexec_path). Evaluating
149 this expression will then print out the contents of the lisp
150 variable exec-path.
152 If QuickWatch reports that the symbol is unknown, then check the
153 call stack in the Call Stack window. If the selected frame in the
154 call stack is not an Emacs procedure, then the debugger won't
155 recognize Emacs symbols. Instead, select a frame that is inside
156 an Emacs procedure and try using debug_print again.
158 If QuickWatch invokes debug_print but nothing happens, then check
159 the thread that is selected in the debugger. If the selected
160 thread is not the last thread to run (the "current" thread), then
161 it cannot be used to execute debug_print. Use the Debug menu
162 to select the current thread and try using debug_print again.
163 Note that the debugger halts execution (e.g., due to a breakpoint)
164 in the context of the current thread, so this should only be a problem
165 if you've explicitly switched threads.