1 Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2 See the end of the file for license conditions.
4 Precompiled Distributions of
11 This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on
12 Windows (versions before Windows 95 and NT4 are not supported).
13 This port is a part of the standard GNU Emacs distribution from the
14 Free Software Foundation; the precompiled distributions are provided
15 here for convenience since the majority of Windows users are not
16 accustomed to compiling programs themselves. Corresponding source
17 can be found in the parent directory in emacs-24.3.tar.gz.
19 * IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER
21 If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of
22 Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL. For instance,
23 if you put the emacs-24.3-bin-i386.zip file from this directory on
24 an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of
25 the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-24.3.tar.gz).
27 Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we
28 might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the
32 * Files in this directory
34 + emacs-24.3-bin-i386.zip
35 Windows binaries of Emacs-24.3, with all lisp code and documentation
38 Download this file if you want a single installation package, and
39 are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After
40 unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have
41 Emacs add icons to the Start Menu.
43 If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to
44 unpack the source distribution on top of this installation.
46 + libXpm-3.5.8-w32-src.zip
47 Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.8 on Windows. Contains
48 a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for
49 generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the
50 source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from
51 libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-24.3-bin-i386.zip.
53 * Prerequisites for running Emacs on Windows 9X
55 Using Emacs in GUI mode on Windows 95/98/Me requires the UNICOWS.DLL
56 dynamic library, which provides MSLU, the Microsoft Unicode Layer
57 for Windows 9X. You can freely download it from the Microsoft site.
61 Emacs 24.3 contains support for images, however for most image
62 formats supporting libraries are required. This distribution has
63 been tested with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for
64 Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php), and the libraries
65 found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image
66 formats are supported:
68 PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for
69 the black and white versions of the toolbar icons.
71 XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org
72 release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but
73 can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll,
74 libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll.
76 PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.4 or later, which will
77 be named libpng14.dll or libpng14-14.dll. LibPNG requires zlib,
78 which should come from the same source as you got libpng.
79 Starting with Emacs 23.3, the precompiled Emacs binaries are
80 built with libpng 1.4.x and later, and are incompatible with
81 earlier versions of libpng DLLs. So if you have libpng 1.2.x,
82 the PNG support will not work, and you will have to download
85 JPEG: requires the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later,
86 which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll.
88 TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll
91 GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be
92 called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll.
94 SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you
95 compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the
96 dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome
97 as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many
102 In order to support XML via libxml2 at runtime, a libxml2-enabled
103 Emacs must be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure
104 to do so is not an error, but libxml2 features won't be available to
107 You can get pre-built binaries (including any required DLL and the
108 header files) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
110 * Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format
112 Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar
113 file (*.tar.gz). Because Emacs is quite large and therefore
114 difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows
115 binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source
116 plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking
117 over the top of the source distribution. Formerly, we used the same
118 .tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with
119 .zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these
120 natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip
123 * Distributions for non-x86 platforms
125 Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older
126 platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand,
127 and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you
128 are willing to help port Emacs 24 to 64 bit versions of Windows,
129 your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list.
131 * Unpacking distributions
133 Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file
134 format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU
135 programs, for example:
137 Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/
138 GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
140 Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also
141 able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical
142 program that is able to handle many archive formats.
144 Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window. Decide on a directory in which
145 to place Emacs. Move the distribution to that directory, and then
146 unpack it as follows.
148 If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar
149 file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags
150 to extract the files from the tar file:
152 % gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf -
154 You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the
155 modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a
156 broken pipe. These messages are harmless and you can ignore them. On
157 Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed
158 form, taking up less space on disk. Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and
159 98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the
160 djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one
163 % djtarnt -x some.tar.gz
165 You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using
166 djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless).
168 Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
169 if you do not already have other tools to do this.
173 The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
174 if you do not already have other tools to do this.
178 Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should
179 have the following subdirectories:
181 bin etc info lisp site-lisp
184 * Unpacking with other tools
186 If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check
187 the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted:
189 + Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will
190 be unusable. Older versions of WinZip would enable this
191 translation by default when unpacking .tar files. If you are
192 using WinZip, disable it. (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do
193 not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.)
195 + Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there
196 should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to
197 abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking
198 and Emacs will not start.
200 + Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser. Some
201 proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might
202 like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser
205 + I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar
206 corrupts the executables. Use the latest version from the gnuwin32
207 site or another port of tar instead.
209 If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are
210 still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information
214 * Compiling from source
216 If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source
217 distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled
218 distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed
219 directions. It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
220 support to compile the source. The port of GCC included in Cygwin
221 is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble
222 since some builds of GNU make aren't supported.
225 * Further information
227 The Emacs on MS Windows FAQ is distributed with Emacs (info
228 manual "efaq-w32"), and at
230 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/efaq-w32.html
232 In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues
233 related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the
234 list, see this Web page:
236 http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows
238 To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to
239 help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.)
240 To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you
241 find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as
244 Another valuable source of information and help which should not be
245 overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs.
246 These are particularly good for help with general issues which aren't
247 specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use
248 for seeking help are:
253 There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or
254 updated Emacs packages on this group:
260 Most of this README was contributed by former maintainers Andrew Innes
261 (andrewi@gnu.org) and Jason Rumney (jasonr@gnu.org).
264 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
266 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
267 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
268 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
269 (at your option) any later version.
271 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
272 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
273 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
274 GNU General Public License for more details.
276 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
277 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.