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 If you are building out of CVS, then some files in this directory
15 (.bat files, nmake.defs and makefile.w32-in) may need the line-ends
16 fixing first. The easiest way to do this and avoid future conflicts
17 is to run the following command in this (emacs/nt) directory:
20 To compile Emacs, you will need either Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 or
21 later and nmake, or a Windows port of GCC 2.95 or later with Mingw
22 and W32 API support and a port of GNU make. You can use the Cygwin
23 ports of GCC, but Emacs requires the Mingw headers and libraries to
24 build (latest versions of the Cygwin toolkit, at least since v1.3.3,
25 include the MinGW headers and libraries as an integral part).
27 Other compilers may work, but specific reports from people that have
28 tried suggest that the Intel C compiler (for example) may produce an
29 Emacs executable with strange filename completion behaviour. Unless
30 you would like to assist by finding and fixing the cause of any bugs
31 like this, we recommend the use of the supported compilers mentioned
32 in the previous paragraph.
34 If you build Emacs on Windows 9X or ME, not on Windows 2000 or
35 Windows NT, we suggest to install the Cygwin port of Bash.
37 Please see http://www.mingw.org for pointers to GCC/Mingw binaries.
39 For reference, here is a list of which builds of GNU make are known
40 to work or not, and whether they work in the presence and/or absence
41 of sh.exe, the Cygwin port of Bash. Note that any version of make
42 that is compiled with Cygwin will only work with Cygwin tools, due to
43 the use of cygwin style paths. This means Cygwin make is unsuitable
44 for building parts of Emacs that need to invoke Emacs itself (leim and
45 "make bootstrap", for example). Also see the Trouble-shooting section
46 below if you decide to go ahead and use Cygwin make.
48 In addition, using 4NT as your shell is known to fail the build process,
49 at least for 4NT version 3.01. Use cmd.exe, the default NT shell,
54 cygwin b20.1 make (3.75): fails[1, 5] fails[2, 5]
55 MSVC compiled gmake 3.77: okay okay
56 MSVC compiled gmake 3.78.1: okay okay
57 MSVC compiled gmake 3.79.1: okay okay
58 mingw32/gcc-2.92.2 make (3.77): okay okay[4]
59 cygwin compiled gmake 3.77: fails[1, 5] fails[2, 5]
60 cygwin compiled make 3.78.1: fails[5] fails[2, 5]
61 cygwin compiled make 3.79.1: fails[3, 5] fails[2?, 5]
62 mingw32 compiled make 3.79.1: okay okay
66 [1] doesn't cope with makefiles with DOS line endings, so must mount
67 emacs source with text!=binary.
68 [2] fails when needs to invoke shell commands; okay invoking gcc etc.
69 [3] requires LC_MESSAGES support to build; cannot build with early
71 [4] may fail on Windows 9X and Windows ME; if so, install Bash.
72 [5] fails when building leim due to the use of cygwin style paths.
73 May work if building emacs without leim.
77 Configuration of Emacs is now handled by running configure.bat in the
78 nt subdirectory. It will detect which compiler you have available,
79 and generate makefiles accordingly. You can override the compiler
80 detection, and control optimization and debug settings, by specifying
81 options on the command line when invoking configure.
83 To configure Emacs to build with GCC or MSVC, whichever is available,
84 simply change to the nt subdirectory and run `configure' with no
85 options. To see what options are available, run `configure --help'.
87 N.B. It is normal to see a few error messages output while configure
88 is running, when gcc support is being tested. These cannot be
89 surpressed because of limitations in the Windows 9x command.com shell.
91 * Optional image library support
93 To build Emacs with support for PNG images, the libpng and zlib
94 headers must be in the include path when the configure script is
95 run. This can be setup using environment variables, or by
96 specifying --cflags -I... options on the command-line to
97 configure.bat. Similarly, the jpeg-6b, libXpm, tiff and libungif
98 headers need to be in the include path for support for those image
99 formats to work. The configure script will report whether it was
100 able to detect the headers.
102 To use the PNG support, zlib.dll (or zlibd.dll) and libpng.dll (or
103 libpng13.dll, or libpng13d.dll) must be on the PATH or in the same
104 directory as emacs.exe when Emacs is started. Similar instructions
105 apply for other image libraries. Note that tiff support depends on
106 the jpeg library. If you did not compile the libraries yourself, you
107 must make sure that the jpeg library you install is the same one
108 that the tiff library was compiled against.
112 After running configure, simply run the appropriate `make' program for
113 your compiler to build Emacs. For MSVC, this is nmake; for GCC, it is
116 As the files are compiled, you will see some warning messages
117 declaring that some functions don't return a value, or that some data
118 conversions will be lossy, etc. You can safely ignore these messages.
119 The warnings may be fixed in the main FSF source at some point, but
120 until then we will just live with them.
124 To install Emacs after it has compiled, simply run `nmake install'
125 or `make install', depending on which version of the Make utility
128 By default, Emacs will be installed in the location where it was
129 built, but a different location can be specified either using the
130 --prefix option to configure, or by setting INSTALL_DIR when running
133 make install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs
135 (for `nmake', type "nmake install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs" instead).
137 The install process will run addpm to setup the registry entries, and
138 to create a Start menu icon for Emacs.
142 The main problems that are likely to be encountered when building
143 Emacs stem from using an old version of GCC, or old Mingw or W32 API
144 headers. Additionally, cygwin ports of GNU make may require the Emacs
145 source tree to be mounted with text!=binary, because the makefiles
146 generated by configure.bat necessarily use DOS line endings. Also,
147 cygwin ports of make must run in UNIX mode, either by specifying
148 --unix on the command line, or MAKE_MODE=UNIX in the environment.
150 When configure runs, it attempts to detect when GCC itself, or the
151 headers it is using, are not suitable for building Emacs. GCC version
152 2.95 or later is needed, because that is when the Windows port gained
153 sufficient support for anonymous structs and unions to cope with some
154 definitions from winnt.h that are used by addsection.c. The W32 API
155 headers that come with Cygwin b20.1 are incomplete, and do not include
156 some definitions required by addsection.c, for instance. Also, older
157 releases of the W32 API headers from Anders Norlander contain a typo
158 in the definition of IMAGE_FIRST_SECTION in winnt.h, which
159 addsection.c relies on. Versions of w32api-xxx.zip from at least
160 1999-11-18 onwards are okay.
162 If configure succeeds, but make fails, install the Cygwin port of
163 Bash, even if the table above indicates that Emacs should be able to
164 build without sh.exe. (Some versions of Windows shells are too dumb
165 for Makefile's used by Emacs.)
167 If you are using certain Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin version
168 1.1.8, you may need to specify some extra compiler flags like so:
170 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
173 However, the latest Cygwin versions, such as 1.3.3, don't need those
174 switches; you can simply use "configure --with-gcc".
176 We will attempt to auto-detect the need for these flags in a future
181 You should be able to debug Emacs using the debugger that is
182 appropriate for the compiler you used, namely DevStudio or Windbg if
183 compiled with MSVC, or gdb if compiled with gcc.
185 Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that reflects
186 their names in lisp. The names of the C routines are the lisp names
187 prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to underscores. For
188 example, the function call-process is implemented in C by
189 Fcall_process. Similarly, lisp variables are prefixed with 'V', again
190 with dashes converted to underscores. These conventions enable you to
191 easily set breakpoints or examine familiar lisp variables by name.
193 Since Emacs data is often in the form of a lisp object, and the
194 Lisp_Object type is difficult to examine manually in the MSVC
195 debugger, Emacs provides a helper routine called debug_print that
196 prints out a readable representation of a Lisp_Object. (If you are
197 using gdb, there is a .gdbinit file in the src directory which
198 provides definitions that are useful for examining lisp objects. The
199 following tips are mainly of interest when using MSVC.) The output
200 from debug_print is sent to stderr, and to the debugger via the
201 OutputDebugString routine. The output sent to stderr should be
202 displayed in the console window that was opened when the emacs.exe
203 executable was started. The output sent to the debugger should be
204 displayed in its "Debug" output window.
206 When you are in the process of debugging Emacs and you would like to
207 examine the contents of a Lisp_Object variable, popup the QuickWatch
208 window (QuickWatch has an eyeglass symbol on its button in the
209 toolbar). In the text field at the top of the window, enter
210 debug_print(<variable>) and hit return. For example, start and run
211 Emacs in the debugger until it is waiting for user input. Then click
212 on the Break button in the debugger to halt execution. Emacs should
213 halt in ZwUserGetMessage waiting for an input event. Use the Call
214 Stack window to select the procedure w32_msp_pump up the call stack
215 (see below for why you have to do this). Open the QuickWatch window
216 and enter debug_print(Vexec_path). Evaluating this expression will
217 then print out the contents of the lisp variable exec-path.
219 If QuickWatch reports that the symbol is unknown, then check the call
220 stack in the Call Stack window. If the selected frame in the call
221 stack is not an Emacs procedure, then the debugger won't recognize
222 Emacs symbols. Instead, select a frame that is inside an Emacs
223 procedure and try using debug_print again.
225 If QuickWatch invokes debug_print but nothing happens, then check the
226 thread that is selected in the debugger. If the selected thread is
227 not the last thread to run (the "current" thread), then it cannot be
228 used to execute debug_print. Use the Debug menu to select the current
229 thread and try using debug_print again. Note that the debugger halts
230 execution (e.g., due to a breakpoint) in the context of the current
231 thread, so this should only be a problem if you've explicitly switched
236 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
237 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
238 copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
239 and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
240 for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
242 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
243 of this document, or of portions of it,
244 under the above conditions, provided also that they
245 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them,
246 and that any new or changed statements about the activities
247 of the Free Software Foundation are approved by the Foundation.