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
18 build (latest versions of the Cygwin toolkit, at least since v1.3.3,
19 include the MinGW headers and libraries as an integral part).
21 Other compilers may work, but specific reports from people that have
22 tried suggest that the Intel C compiler (for example) may produce an
23 Emacs executable with strange filename completion behaviour. Unless
24 you would like to assist by finding and fixing the cause of any bugs
25 like this, we recommend the use of the supported compilers mentioned
26 in the previous paragraph.
28 If you build Emacs on Windows 9X or ME, not on Windows 2000 or
29 Windows NT, we suggest to install the Cygwin port of Bash.
31 Please see http://www.mingw.org for pointers to GCC/Mingw binaries.
33 For reference, here is a list of which builds of GNU make are known
34 to work or not, and whether they work in the presence and/or absence
35 of sh.exe, the Cygwin port of Bash. Note that any version of make
36 that is compiled with Cygwin will only work with Cygwin tools, due to
37 the use of cygwin style paths. This means Cygwin make is unsuitable
38 for building parts of Emacs that need to invoke Emacs itself (leim and
39 "make bootstrap", for example). Also see the Trouble-shooting section
40 below if you decide to go ahead and use Cygwin make.
42 In addition, using 4NT as your shell is known to fail the build process,
43 at least for 4NT version 3.01. Use cmd.exe, the default NT shell,
48 cygwin b20.1 make (3.75): fails[1, 5] fails[2, 5]
49 MSVC compiled gmake 3.77: okay okay
50 MSVC compiled gmake 3.78.1: okay okay
51 MSVC compiled gmake 3.79.1: okay okay
52 mingw32/gcc-2.92.2 make (3.77): okay okay[4]
53 cygwin compiled gmake 3.77: fails[1, 5] fails[2, 5]
54 cygwin compiled make 3.78.1: fails[5] fails[2, 5]
55 cygwin compiled make 3.79.1: fails[3, 5] fails[2?, 5]
56 mingw32 compiled make 3.79.1: okay okay
60 [1] doesn't cope with makefiles with DOS line endings, so must mount
61 emacs source with text!=binary.
62 [2] fails when needs to invoke shell commands; okay invoking gcc etc.
63 [3] requires LC_MESSAGES support to build; cannot build with early
65 [4] may fail on Windows 9X and Windows ME; if so, install Bash.
66 [5] fails when building leim due to the use of cygwin style paths.
67 May work if building emacs without leim.
71 Configuration of Emacs is now handled by running configure.bat in the
72 nt subdirectory. It will detect which compiler you have available,
73 and generate makefiles accordingly. You can override the compiler
74 detection, and control optimization and debug settings, by specifying
75 options on the command line when invoking configure.
77 To configure Emacs to build with GCC or MSVC, whichever is available,
78 simply change to the nt subdirectory and run `configure' with no
79 options. To see what options are available, run `configure --help'.
81 N.B. It is normal to see a few error messages output while configure
82 is running, when gcc support is being tested. These cannot be
83 surpressed because of limitations in the Windows 9x command.com shell.
85 * Optional image library support
87 To build Emacs with support for PNG images, the libpng and zlib
88 headers must be in the include path when the configure script is
89 run. This can be setup using environment variables, or by
90 specifying --cflags -I... options on the command-line to
91 configure.bat. Similarly, the jpeg-6b, libXpm, tiff and libungif
92 headers need to be in the include path for support for those image
93 formats to work. The configure script will report whether it was
94 able to detect the headers.
96 To use the PNG support, zlib.dll (or zlibd.dll) and libpng.dll (or
97 libpng13.dll, or libpng13d.dll) must be on the PATH or in the same
98 directory as emacs.exe when Emacs is started. Similar instructions
99 apply for other image libraries. Note that tiff support depends on
100 the jpeg library. If you did not compile the libraries yourself, you
101 must make sure that the jpeg library you install is the same one
102 that the tiff library was compiled against.
106 After running configure, simply run the appropriate `make' program for
107 your compiler to build Emacs. For MSVC, this is nmake; for GCC, it is
110 As the files are compiled, you will see some warning messages
111 declaring that some functions don't return a value, or that some data
112 conversions will be lossy, etc. You can safely ignore these messages.
113 The warnings may be fixed in the main FSF source at some point, but
114 until then we will just live with them.
118 To install Emacs after it has compiled, simply run `nmake install'
119 or `make install', depending on which version of the Make utility
122 By default, Emacs will be installed in the location where it was
123 built, but a different location can be specified either using the
124 --prefix option to configure, or by setting INSTALL_DIR when running
127 make install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs
129 (for `nmake', type "nmake install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs" instead).
131 The install process will run addpm to setup the registry entries, and
132 to create a Start menu icon for Emacs.
136 The main problems that are likely to be encountered when building
137 Emacs stem from using an old version of GCC, or old Mingw or W32 API
138 headers. Additionally, cygwin ports of GNU make may require the Emacs
139 source tree to be mounted with text!=binary, because the makefiles
140 generated by configure.bat necessarily use DOS line endings. Also,
141 cygwin ports of make must run in UNIX mode, either by specifying
142 --unix on the command line, or MAKE_MODE=UNIX in the environment.
144 When configure runs, it attempts to detect when GCC itself, or the
145 headers it is using, are not suitable for building Emacs. GCC version
146 2.95 or later is needed, because that is when the Windows port gained
147 sufficient support for anonymous structs and unions to cope with some
148 definitions from winnt.h that are used by addsection.c. The W32 API
149 headers that come with Cygwin b20.1 are incomplete, and do not include
150 some definitions required by addsection.c, for instance. Also, older
151 releases of the W32 API headers from Anders Norlander contain a typo
152 in the definition of IMAGE_FIRST_SECTION in winnt.h, which
153 addsection.c relies on. Versions of w32api-xxx.zip from at least
154 1999-11-18 onwards are okay.
156 If configure succeeds, but make fails, install the Cygwin port of
157 Bash, even if the table above indicates that Emacs should be able to
158 build without sh.exe. (Some versions of Windows shells are too dumb
159 for Makefile's used by Emacs.)
161 If you are using certain Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin version
162 1.1.8, you may need to specify some extra compiler flags like so:
164 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
167 However, the latest Cygwin versions, such as 1.3.3, don't need those
168 switches; you can simply use "configure --with-gcc".
170 We will attempt to auto-detect the need for these flags in a future
175 You should be able to debug Emacs using the debugger that is
176 appropriate for the compiler you used, namely DevStudio or Windbg if
177 compiled with MSVC, or gdb if compiled with gcc.
179 Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that reflects
180 their names in lisp. The names of the C routines are the lisp names
181 prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to underscores. For
182 example, the function call-process is implemented in C by
183 Fcall_process. Similarly, lisp variables are prefixed with 'V', again
184 with dashes converted to underscores. These conventions enable you to
185 easily set breakpoints or examine familiar lisp variables by name.
187 Since Emacs data is often in the form of a lisp object, and the
188 Lisp_Object type is difficult to examine manually in the MSVC
189 debugger, Emacs provides a helper routine called debug_print that
190 prints out a readable representation of a Lisp_Object. (If you are
191 using gdb, there is a .gdbinit file in the src directory which
192 provides definitions that are useful for examining lisp objects. The
193 following tips are mainly of interest when using MSVC.) The output
194 from debug_print is sent to stderr, and to the debugger via the
195 OutputDebugString routine. The output sent to stderr should be
196 displayed in the console window that was opened when the emacs.exe
197 executable was started. The output sent to the debugger should be
198 displayed in its "Debug" output window.
200 When you are in the process of debugging Emacs and you would like to
201 examine the contents of a Lisp_Object variable, popup the QuickWatch
202 window (QuickWatch has an eyeglass symbol on its button in the
203 toolbar). In the text field at the top of the window, enter
204 debug_print(<variable>) and hit return. For example, start and run
205 Emacs in the debugger until it is waiting for user input. Then click
206 on the Break button in the debugger to halt execution. Emacs should
207 halt in ZwUserGetMessage waiting for an input event. Use the Call
208 Stack window to select the procedure w32_msp_pump up the call stack
209 (see below for why you have to do this). Open the QuickWatch window
210 and enter debug_print(Vexec_path). Evaluating this expression will
211 then print out the contents of the lisp variable exec-path.
213 If QuickWatch reports that the symbol is unknown, then check the call
214 stack in the Call Stack window. If the selected frame in the call
215 stack is not an Emacs procedure, then the debugger won't recognize
216 Emacs symbols. Instead, select a frame that is inside an Emacs
217 procedure and try using debug_print again.
219 If QuickWatch invokes debug_print but nothing happens, then check the
220 thread that is selected in the debugger. If the selected thread is
221 not the last thread to run (the "current" thread), then it cannot be
222 used to execute debug_print. Use the Debug menu to select the current
223 thread and try using debug_print again. Note that the debugger halts
224 execution (e.g., due to a breakpoint) in the context of the current
225 thread, so this should only be a problem if you've explicitly switched
230 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
231 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
232 copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
233 and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
234 for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
236 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
237 of this document, or of portions of it,
238 under the above conditions, provided also that they
239 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them,
240 and that any new or changed statements about the activities
241 of the Free Software Foundation are approved by the Foundation.