1 Building and Installing Emacs on MS-Windows
2 using the MSYS and MinGW tools
4 Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end of the file for license conditions.
7 The MSYS/MinGW build described here is supported on versions of
8 Windows starting with Windows 2000 and newer. Windows 9X are not
9 supported (but the Emacs binary produced by this build will run on
12 * For the brave (a.k.a. "impatient"):
14 For those who have a working MSYS/MinGW development environment and
15 are comfortable with running Posix configure scripts, here are the
16 concise instructions for configuring and building the native Windows
17 binary of Emacs with these tools.
19 Do not use this recipe with Cygwin. For building on Cygwin, use the
20 normal installation instructions, ../INSTALL.
22 Do not use these instructions if you don't have MSYS installed; for
23 that, see the file INSTALL in this directory.
25 0. Start the MSYS Bash window. Everything else below is done from
26 that window's Bash prompt.
28 0a. If you are building from the development trunk (as opposed to a
29 release tarball), produce the configure script, by typing from
30 the top-level Emacs source directory:
34 1. If you want to build Emacs outside of the source tree
35 (recommended), create the build directory and chdir there.
37 2. Invoke the MSYS-specific configure script:
39 - If you are building outside the source tree:
41 /PATH/TO/EMACS/SOURCE/TREE/nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX ...
43 - If you are building in-place, i.e. inside the source tree:
45 ./nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX ...
47 It is always preferable to use --prefix to configure Emacs for
48 some specific location of its installed tree; the default
49 /usr/local is not suitable for Windows.
51 You can pass other options to the configure script. Here's a
52 typical example (for an in-place debug build):
54 CPPFLAGS='-DGLYPH_DEBUG=1' CFLAGS='-O0 -g3' ./nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=d:/usr/emacs --enable-checking
56 3. After the configure script finishes, it should display the
57 resulting configuration. After that, type
61 Use "make -j N" if your MSYS Make supports parallel execution;
62 the build will take significantly less time in that case. Here N
63 is the number of simultaneous parallel jobs; use the number of
64 the cores on your system.
66 4. Install the produced binaries:
70 If you want the installation tree to go to a place that is
71 different from the one specified by --prefix, say
73 make install prefix=/where/ever/you/want
77 If these short instructions somehow fail, read the rest of this
80 * Installing MinGW and MSYS
82 Make sure you carefully read the following two sections in their
83 entirety and install/configure the various packages as instructed.
84 A correct installation makes all the rest almost trivial; a botched
85 installation will likely make you miserable for quite some time.
87 There are two alternative to installing MinGW + MSYS: using the GUI
88 installer, called mingw-get, provided by the MinGW project, or
89 manual installation. The next two sections describe each one of
92 ** Installing MinGW and MSYS using mingw-get
94 A nice GUI installer, called mingw-get, is available for those who
95 don't like to mess with manual installations. You can download it
98 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Installer/mingw-get/
100 (This installer only supports packages downloaded from the MinGW
101 site; for the rest you will still need the manual method.)
103 After installing mingw-get, invoke it to install the packages that
104 are already selected by default on the "Select Components" screen of
107 After that, use "ming-get install PACKAGE" to install the following
111 . mingw-developer-toolkit
114 (We recommend that you refrain from installing the MSYS Texinfo
115 package, which is part of msys-base, because it might produce mixed
116 EOL format when installing Info files. Instead, install the MinGW
117 port of Texinfo, see the URL below.)
119 At this point, you should be ready to configure and build Emacs in
120 its basic configuration. Skip to the "Generating the configure
121 script" section for the build instructions. If you want to build it
122 with image support and other optional libraries, read about the
123 optional libraries near the end of this document, before you start
126 ** Installing MinGW and MSYS manually
130 You will need to install the MinGW port of GCC and Binutils, and the
131 MinGW runtime and Windows API distributions, to compile Emacs. You
132 can find these on the MinGW download/Base page:
134 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Base/
136 In general, install the latest stable versions of the following
137 MinGW packages from that page: gcc, binutils, mingw-rt, w32api. You
138 only need the 'bin' and the 'dll' tarballs of each of the above.
140 MinGW packages are distributed as .tar.lzma compressed archives. To
141 install the packages manually, we recommend to use the Windows port
142 of the 'bsdtar' program to unpack the tarballs. 'bsdtar' is
143 available as part of the 'libarchive' package from here:
145 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
147 The recommended place to install these packages is a single tree
148 starting from some directory on a drive other than the system drive
149 C:. A typical example would be D:\usr, with D:\usr\bin holding the
150 binaries and DLLs (should be added to your Path environment
151 variable), D:\usr\include holding the include files, D:\usr\lib
152 holding the static and import libraries, D:\usr\share holding docs,
153 message catalogs, and package-specific subdirectories, etc.
155 Having all the headers and libraries in a single place will greatly
156 reduce the number of -I and -L flags you will have to pass to the
157 configure script (see below), as these files will be right where the
158 compiler expects them.
160 We specifically do NOT recommend installing packages below
161 "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Program Files (x86)". These directories
162 are protected on versions of Windows from Vista and on, and you will
163 have difficulties updating and maintaining your installation later,
164 due to UAC elevation prompts, file virtualization, etc. You *have*
167 Additional MinGW packages are required/recommended, especially if
168 you are building from the Bazaar repository:
170 . Texinfo (needed to produce the Info manuals when building from
171 bzr, and for "make install")
173 Available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
175 . gzip (needed to compress files during "make install")
177 Available from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gzip.htm.
179 . pkg-config (needed for building with some optional libraries,
180 such as GnuTLS and libxml2)
182 Available from http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php
184 Each package might list other packages as prerequisites on its
185 download page (under "Runtime requirements"); download those as
186 well. (Using the GUI installer mingw-get will fetch those
187 prerequisites automatically for you.) A missing prerequisite will
188 manifest itself by the program failing to run and presenting a
189 pop-up dialog that states the missing or incompatible DLL; be sure
190 to find and install these missing DLLs.
192 Once you think you have MinGW installed, test the installation by
193 building a trivial "hello, world!" program, and make sure that it
194 builds without any error messages and the binary works when run.
198 You will also need a reasonably full MSYS installation. MSYS is an
199 environment needed to run the Posix configure scripts and the
200 resulting Makefile's, in order to produce native Windows binaries
201 using the MinGW compiler and runtime libraries. Here's the list of
202 MSYS packages that are required:
204 . All the packages from the MSYS Base distribution, listed here:
206 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/Base/
208 . Additional packages listed below, from the MSYS Extension
211 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/Extension/
219 These should only be needed if you intend to build development
220 versions of Emacs from the Bazaar repository.
222 . Additional packages (needed only if building from the Bazaar
223 repository): Automake and Autoconf. They are available from
226 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/automake-1.11.6-msys-bin.zip/download
227 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/autoconf-2.65-msys-bin.zip/download
229 MSYS packages are distributed as .tar.lzma compressed archives. To
230 install the packages manually, we recommend to use the Windows port
231 of the 'bsdtar' program, already mentioned above.
233 If/when you are confident in your MinGW/MSYS installation, and want
234 to speed up the builds, we recommend installing a pre-release
235 version of Make from here:
237 https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/external-binary-packages/
239 These are snapshot builds of many packages, but you only need
240 make.exe from there. The advantage of this make.exe is that it
241 supports parallel builds, so you can use "make -j N" to considerably
244 For each of these packages, install the 'bin' and 'dll' tarballs of
245 their latest stable releases. If there's an 'ext' tarball (e.g.,
246 msysCORE and Coreutils have it), download and install those as well.
248 Each package might list other packages as prerequisites on its
249 download page (under "Runtime requirements"); download those as
250 well. (Using the GUI installer mingw-get will fetch those
251 prerequisites automatically for you.) A missing prerequisite will
252 manifest itself by the program failing to run and presenting a
253 pop-up dialog that states the missing or incompatible DLL; be sure
254 to find and install these missing DLLs.
256 MSYS packages should be installed in a separate tree from MinGW.
257 For example, use D:\MSYS or D:\usr\MSYS as the top-level directory
258 from which you unpack all of the MSYS packages.
260 Do NOT add the MSYS bin directory to your Windows Path! Only the
261 MinGW bin directory should be on Path. When you install MSYS, it
262 creates a shortcut on your desktop that invokes the MSYS Bash shell
263 in a Command Prompt window; that shell is already set up so that the
264 MSYS bin directory is on PATH ahead of any other directory. Thus,
265 Bash will find MSYS executables first, which is exactly what you
268 At this point, you are ready to build Emacs in its basic
269 configuration. If you want to build it with image support and other
270 optional libraries, read about that near the end of this document.
272 * Generating the configure script
274 If you are building a release or pretest tarball, skip this section,
275 because the configure script is already present in the tarball.
277 To build a development snapshot from the Emacs Bazaar repository,
278 you will first need to generate the configure script and a few other
279 auto-generated files. (If this step, described below, somehow
280 fails, you can use the files in the autogen/ directory instead, but
281 they might be outdated, and, most importantly, you are well advised
282 not to disregard any failures in your local build procedures, as
283 these are likely to be symptoms of incorrect installation that will
284 bite you down the road.)
286 To generate the configure script, type this at the MSYS Bash prompt
287 from the top-level directory of the Emacs tree:
291 If successful, this command should produce the following output:
294 Checking whether you have the necessary tools...
295 (Read INSTALL.BZR for more details on building Emacs)
297 Checking for autoconf (need at least version 2.65)...
299 Checking for automake (need at least version 1.11)...
301 Your system has the required tools, running autoreconf...
302 You can now run `./configure'.
304 * Configuring Emacs for MinGW:
306 Now it's time to run the configure script. You can do that either
307 from a separate build directory that is outside of the Emacs source
308 tree (recommended), or from inside the source tree. The former is
309 recommended because it allows you to have several different builds,
310 e.g., an optimized build and an unoptimized one, of the same
311 revision of the source tree; the source tree will be left in its
312 pristine state, without any build products.
314 You invoke the configure script like this:
316 /PATH/TO/EMACS/SOURCE/TREE/nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX ...
318 or, if you are building in-place, i.e. inside the source tree:
320 ./nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX ...
322 Here PREFIX is the place where you eventually want to install Emacs
323 once built, e.g. d:/usr.
325 You can pass additional options to the configure script, for the
328 ./nt/msysconfig.sh --help
330 As explained in the help text, you may need to tell the script what
331 are the optional flags to invoke the compiler. This is needed if
332 some of your headers and libraries, e.g., those belonging to
333 optional image libraries, are installed in places where the compiler
334 normally doesn't look for them. (Remember that advice above to
335 avoid such situations? here's is where you will start paying for
336 disregarding that recommendation.) For example, if you have libpng
337 headers in C:\emacs\libs\libpng-1.2.37-lib\include and jpeg library
338 headers in C:\emacs\libs\jpeg-6b-4-lib\include, you will need to say
341 CPPFLAGS='-Ic:/emacs/libs/libpng-1.2.37-lib/include -Ic:/emacs/libs/jpeg-6b-4-lib/include' ./nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX
343 which is quite a mouth-full, especially if you have more directories
344 to specify... Perhaps you may wish to revisit your installation
347 A few frequently used options are needed when you want to produce an
348 unoptimized binary with runtime checks enabled:
350 CPPFLAGS='-DGLYPH_DEBUG=1' CFLAGS='-O0 -g3' ./nt/msysconfig.sh --prefix=PREFIX --enable-checking
352 Once invoked, the configure script will run for some time, and, if
353 successful, will eventually produce a summary of the configuration
356 Configured for `i686-pc-mingw32'.
358 Where should the build process find the source code? /path/to/emacs/sources
359 What compiler should emacs be built with? gcc -std=gnu99 -O0 -g3
360 Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes
361 Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers? yes
362 Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation? no
363 What window system should Emacs use? w32
364 What toolkit should Emacs use? none
365 Where do we find X Windows header files? NONE
366 Where do we find X Windows libraries? NONE
367 Does Emacs use -lXaw3d? no
368 Does Emacs use -lXpm? yes
369 Does Emacs use -ljpeg? yes
370 Does Emacs use -ltiff? yes
371 Does Emacs use a gif library? yes
372 Does Emacs use -lpng? yes
373 Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2? no
374 Does Emacs use imagemagick? no
375 Does Emacs use -lgpm? no
376 Does Emacs use -ldbus? no
377 Does Emacs use -lgconf? no
378 Does Emacs use GSettings? no
379 Does Emacs use -lselinux? no
380 Does Emacs use -lgnutls? yes
381 Does Emacs use -lxml2? yes
382 Does Emacs use -lfreetype? no
383 Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt? no
384 Does Emacs use -lotf? no
385 Does Emacs use -lxft? no
386 Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars? yes
388 You are almost there, hang on.
390 If the output is significantly different, or if configure finishes
391 prematurely and displays some error message, you should examine the
392 configuration log in config.log and find the reason for the failure.
394 Once you succeeded in configuring Emacs, and just want to rebuild it
395 after updating your local repository from the main repository, you
396 don't need to re-run the configure script manually, unless you want
397 to change the configure-time options. Just typing "make" will
398 re-run configure if necessary with the exact same options you
399 specified originally, and then go on to invoking Make, described
404 This is simple: just type "make" and sit back, watching the fun.
406 If you installed a snapshot build of Make, the build will be much
407 faster if you type "make -j N" instead, where N is the number of
408 independent processing units on your machine. E.g., on a core i7
409 system try using N of 6 or even 8.
411 When Make finishes, you can install the produced binaries:
415 or, if you want the installed tree to go in a place different from
416 the configured one, type
418 make install prefix=WHEREVER
420 Congrats! You have built and installed your own Emacs!
424 The following make targets may be used by users building the source
425 distribution, or users who have checked out of Bazaar after
426 an initial bootstrapping.
429 Builds Emacs from the available sources and pre-compiled lisp files.
432 Installs the built programs and the auxiliary files.
435 Removes object and executable files produced by the build process in
436 the current configuration. After "make clean", you can rebuild with
437 the same configuration using make. useful when you want to be sure
438 that all of the products are built from coherent sources.
441 In addition to the files removed by make clean, this also removes
442 Makefiles and other generated files to get back to the state of a
443 freshly unpacked source distribution. After make distclean, it is
444 necessary to run the configure script followed by "make", in order
447 The following targets are intended only for use with the Bazaar sources.
450 Removes all the auto-generated files and all the *.elc byte-compiled
451 files, and builds Emacs from scratch. Useful when some change in
452 basic Emacs functionality makes byte compilation of updated files
455 make maintainer-clean
456 Removes everything that can be recreated, including compiled Lisp
457 files, to get back to the state of a fresh Bazaar tree. After make
458 maintainer-clean, it is necessary to run configure and "make" or
459 "make bootstrap" to rebuild. Occasionally it may be necessary to
460 run this target after an update.
462 * Optional image library support
464 In addition to its "native" image formats (pbm and xbm), Emacs can
465 handle other image types: xpm, tiff, gif, png, jpeg and experimental
468 To build Emacs with support for them, the corresponding headers must
469 be in the include path and libraries should be where the linker
470 looks for them, when the configure script is run. If needed, this
471 can be set up using the CPPFLAGS and CFLAGS variable specified on
472 the configure command line. The configure script will report
473 whether it was able to detect the headers and libraries. If the
474 results of this testing appear to be incorrect, please look for
475 details in the file config.log: it will show the failed test
476 programs and compiler error messages that should explain what is
477 wrong. (Usually, any such failures happen because some headers are
478 missing due to bad packaging of the image support libraries.)
480 Note that any file path passed to the compiler or linker must use
481 forward slashes, or double each backslash, as that is how Bash
484 If the configure script finds the necessary headers and libraries,
485 but they are for some reason incompatible, or if you want to omit
486 support for some image library that is installed on your system for
487 some other reason, use the --without-PACKAGE option to configure,
488 such as --without-gif to omit GIF, --without-tiff to omit TIFF, etc.
489 Passing the --help option to the configure script displays all of
490 the supported --without-PACKAGE options.
492 To use the external image support, the DLLs implementing the
493 functionality must be found when Emacs first needs them, either on the
494 PATH, or in the same directory as emacs.exe. Failure to find a
495 library is not an error; the associated image format will simply be
496 unavailable. Note that once Emacs has determined that a library can
497 not be found, there's no way to force it to try again, other than
498 restarting. See the variable `dynamic-library-alist' to configure the
499 expected names of the libraries.
501 Some image libraries have dependencies on one another, or on zlib.
502 For example, tiff support depends on the jpeg library. If you did not
503 compile the libraries yourself, you must make sure that any dependency
504 is in the PATH or otherwise accessible and that the binaries are
505 compatible (for example, that they were built with the same compiler).
507 Binaries for the image libraries (among many others) can be found at
508 the GnuWin32 project. PNG, JPEG and TIFF libraries are also
509 included with GTK, which is installed along with other Free Software
510 that requires it. Note specifically that, due to some packaging
511 snafus in the GnuWin32-supplied image libraries, you will need to
512 download _source_ packages for some of the libraries in order to get
513 the header files necessary for building Emacs with image support.
515 For PNG images, we recommend to use versions 1.4.x and later of
516 libpng, because previous versions had security issues. You can find
517 precompiled libraries and headers on the GTK download page for
518 Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php).
520 Versions 1.4.0 and later of libpng are binary incompatible with
521 earlier versions, so Emacs will only look for libpng libraries which
522 are compatible with the version it was compiled against. That
523 version is given by the value of the Lisp variable `libpng-version';
524 e.g., 10403 means version 1.4.3. The variable `dynamic-library-alist'
525 is automatically set to name only those DLL names that are known to
526 be compatible with the version given by `libpng-version'. If PNG
527 support does not work for you even though you have the support DLL
528 installed, check the name of the installed DLL against
529 `dynamic-library-alist' and the value of `libpng-version', and
530 download compatible DLLs if needed.
532 * Optional GnuTLS support
534 To compile with GnuTLS, you will need pkg-config to be installed, as
535 the configure script invokes pkg-config to find out which compiler
536 switches to use for GnuTLS. See above for the URL where you can
537 find pkg-config for Windows.
539 You will also need to install the p11-kit package, which is a
540 dependency of GnuTLS, and its header files are needed for
541 compilation of programs that use GnuTLS. You can find p11-kit on
542 the same site as GnuTLS, see the URL below.
544 If the configure script finds the GnuTLS header files and libraries
545 on your system, Emacs is built with GnuTLS support by default; to
546 avoid that you can pass the argument --without-gnutls.
548 In order to support GnuTLS at runtime, a GnuTLS-enabled Emacs must
549 be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so
550 is not an error, but GnuTLS won't be available to the running
553 You can get pre-built binaries (including any required DLL and the
554 header files) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
556 * Optional libxml2 support
558 To compile with libxml2, you will need pkg-config to be installed,
559 as the configure script invokes pkg-config to find out which
560 compiler switches to use for libxml2. See above for the URL where
561 you can find pkg-config for Windows.
563 If the configure script finds the libxml2 header files and libraries
564 on your system, Emacs is built with libxml2 support by default; to
565 avoid that you can pass the argument --without-libxml2.
567 In order to support libxml2 at runtime, a libxml2-enabled Emacs must
568 be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so
569 is not an error, but libxml2 features won't be available to the
572 One place where you can get pre-built Windows binaries of libxml2
573 (including any required DLL and the header files) is here:
575 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
577 For runtime support of libxml2, you will also need to install the
578 libiconv "development" tarball, because the libiconv headers need to
579 be available to the compiler when you compile with libxml2 support.
580 A MinGW port of libiconv can be found on the MinGW site:
582 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Base/libiconv/
584 You need the libiconv-X.Y.Z-N-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma tarball from that
587 * Experimental SVG support
589 To compile with SVG, you will need pkg-config to be installed, as
590 the configure script invokes pkg-config to find out which compiler
591 switches to use for SVG. See above for the URL where you can find
592 pkg-config for Windows.
594 SVG support is currently experimental, and not built by default.
595 Specify --with-rsvg and ensure you have all the dependencies in your
596 include path. Unless you have built a minimalist librsvg yourself
597 (untested), librsvg depends on a significant chunk of GTK+ to build,
598 plus a few Gnome libraries, libxml2, libbz2 and zlib at runtime. The
599 easiest way to obtain the dependencies required for building is to
600 download a pre-bundled GTK+ development environment for Windows.
602 To use librsvg at runtime, ensure that librsvg and its dependencies
603 are on your PATH. If you didn't build librsvg yourself, you will
604 need to check with where you downloaded it from for the
605 dependencies, as there are different build options. If it is a
606 short list, then it most likely only lists the immediate
607 dependencies of librsvg, but the dependencies themselves have
608 dependencies - so don't download individual libraries from GTK+,
609 download and install the whole thing. If you think you've got all
610 the dependencies and SVG support is still not working, check your
611 PATH for other libraries that shadow the ones you downloaded.
612 Libraries of the same name from different sources may not be
613 compatible, this problem was encountered with libbzip2 from GnuWin32
614 with libcroco from gnome.org.
616 If you can see etc/images/splash.svg, then you have managed to get
617 SVG support working. Congratulations for making it through DLL hell
618 to this point. You'll probably find that some SVG images crash
619 Emacs. Problems have been observed in some images that contain
620 text, they seem to be a problem in the Windows port of Pango, or
621 maybe a problem with the way Cairo or librsvg is using it that
622 doesn't show up on other platforms.
625 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
627 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
628 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
629 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
630 (at your option) any later version.
632 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
633 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
634 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
635 GNU General Public License for more details.
637 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
638 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.