1 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
2 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5 Precompiled Distributions of
12 This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on
13 Windows (versions before Windows 95 and NT4 are not supported).
14 This port is a part of the standard GNU Emacs distribution from the
15 Free Software Foundation; the precompiled distributions are provided
16 here for convenience since the majority of Windows users are not
17 accustomed to compiling programs themselves. Corresponding source
18 can be found in the parent directory in emacs-23.1.tar.gz.
20 If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
21 your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't
24 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
26 * IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER
28 If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of
29 Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL. For instance,
30 if you put the emacs-23.1-bin-i386.tar.gz file from this directory on
31 an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of
32 the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-23.1.tar.gz).
34 Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we
35 might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the
39 * Files in this directory
41 + emacs-23.1-bin-i386.zip
42 Windows binaries of Emacs-23.1, with all lisp code and documentation
45 Download this file if you want a single installation package, and
46 are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After
47 unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have
48 Emacs add icons to the Start Menu.
50 If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to
51 unpack the source distribution on top of this installation.
53 + emacs-23.1-barebin-i386.zip
54 Windows binaries of Emacs-23.1, without lisp code or documentation.
56 Download this file if you already have the source distribution.
58 Unpack this over the top of the source distribution. It contains the
59 bin subdirectory and etc/DOC file.
61 + libxpm-3.5.7-w32-src.zip
62 Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.7 on Windows. Contains
63 a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for
64 generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the
65 source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from
66 libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-23.1-bin-i386.zip
67 and emacs-23.1-barebin-i386.zip.
71 Emacs 23.1 contains support for images, however for most image formats
72 supporting libraries are required. This distribution has been tested
73 with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for Windows, and the
74 libraries found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image
75 formats are supported:
77 PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for
78 the black and white versions of the toolbar icons.
80 XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org
81 release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but
82 can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll,
83 libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll.
85 PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.2 or later, which will
86 be named libpng13d.dll, libpng13.dll, libpng12d.dll, libpng12.dll
87 or libpng.dll. LibPNG requires zlib, which should come from the same
88 source as you got libpng.
90 JPEG: requires the Independant JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later,
91 which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll.
93 TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll
96 GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be
97 called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll.
99 SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you
100 compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the
101 dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome
102 as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many
105 * Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format
107 Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar
108 file (*.tar.gz). Because Emacs is quite large and therefore
109 difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows
110 binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source
111 plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking
112 over the top of the source distribution. Formerly, we used the same
113 .tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with
114 .zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these
115 natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip
118 * Distributions for non-x86 platforms
120 Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older
121 platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand,
122 and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you
123 are willing to help port Emacs 23 to 64 bit versions of Windows,
124 your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list.
126 * Unpacking distributions
128 Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file
129 format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU
130 programs, for example:
132 Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/
133 GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
135 Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also
136 able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical
137 program that is able to handle many archive formats.
139 Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window. Decide on a directory in which
140 to place Emacs. Move the distribution to that directory, and then
141 unpack it as follows.
143 If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar
144 file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags
145 to extract the files from the tar file:
147 % gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf -
149 You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the
150 modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a
151 broken pipe. These messages are harmless and you can ignore them. On
152 Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed
153 form, taking up less space on disk. Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and
154 98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the
155 djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one
158 % djtarnt -x some.tar.gz
160 You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using
161 djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless).
163 Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
164 if you do not already have other tools to do this.
168 The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
169 if you do not already have other tools to do this.
173 Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should
174 have the following subdirectories:
176 bin etc info lisp site-lisp
179 * Unpacking with other tools
181 If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check
182 the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted:
184 + Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will
185 be unusable. Older versions of WinZip would enable this
186 translation by default when unpacking .tar files. If you are
187 using WinZip, disable it. (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do
188 not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.)
190 + Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there
191 should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to
192 abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking
193 and Emacs will not start.
195 + Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser. Some
196 proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might
197 like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser
200 + I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar
201 corrupts the executables. Use the latest version from the gnuwin32
202 site or another port of tar instead.
204 If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are
205 still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information
209 * Compiling from source
211 If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source
212 distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled
213 distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed
214 directions. It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
215 support to compile the source. The port of GCC included in Cygwin
216 is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble
217 since some builds of GNU make aren't supported.
220 * Further information
222 If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
223 your favorite web browser to following the document (if you haven't
226 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
228 This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information
229 about the Windows port and related software packages. Note that as
230 most of the information in that FAQ is for earlier versions, so some
231 information may not be relevant to Emacs-23.1.
233 In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues
234 related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the
235 list, see this Web page:
237 http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows
239 To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to
240 help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.)
241 To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you
242 find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as
245 Another valuable source of information and help which should not be
246 overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs.
247 These are particuarly good for help with general issues which aren't
248 specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use
249 for seeking help are:
254 There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or
255 updated Emacs packages on this group:
264 Most of this README was contributed by former maintainer Andrew Innes
268 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
270 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
271 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
272 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
273 (at your option) any later version.
275 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
276 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
277 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
278 GNU General Public License for more details.
280 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
281 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.