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>.
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
31 (3) You may need to edit nt/paths.h to specify some other device
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).
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. Under Unix, this file is .emacs;
73 under NT and Win95, this files is _emacs. (If you would like to
74 use a .emacs file that, for example, you share with a Unix version
75 of Emacs, you can invoke Emacs with the -l option to specify the
76 .emacs file that you would like to load.) Note that Emacs requires
77 the environment variable HOME to be set in order for it to locate the
78 _emacs file. Ideally, HOME should not be set in the emacs.bat file
79 as it will be different for each user. (HOME could be set,
80 for example, in the System panel of the Control Panel).
82 (8) Either click on the icon, or run the emacs.bat file, and away you go.
84 If you would like to resize the command window that Emacs uses,
85 or change the font or colors, click on the program manager icon
86 to start Emacs. Change the settings using the "-" menu in the upper
87 left hand corner of the window, making sure to select the "Save"
88 options in the dialog boxes as you do so. Exit Emacs and restart.