Install Emacs from Latest Source

Table of Contents

Download Source#

$ bzr branch http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/trunk emacs_trunk
$ cd emacs_trunk

or 

$ bzr branch http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/emacs-23 emacs-23
$ cd emacs-23

or 

$ git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git
$ cd emacs

# check for latest release
$ git tag | grep "EMACS_23"
$ git checkout EMACS_23_3

# or check for latest pretest
$ git tag | grep "EMACS_PRETEST_24"
$ git checkout EMACS_PRETEST_24_0_92

Snapshot Sources

Mac#

$ ./configure --with-ns

# if above line doesn't work, do
$ ./autogen/copy_autogen
$ ./configure --with-ns

$ make bootstrap
$ make
$ make install
$ open nextstep/Emacs.app

Drag the nextstep/Emacs.app folder to 'Applications'.

Install prerequisites#

Ubuntu#

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential texinfo xorg-dev libgtk2.0-dev libdbus-1-dev librsvg2-dev \
libgpm-dev libgconf2-dev libotf-dev libm17n-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev libtiff4-dev libncurses5-dev

Redhat#

For text based install 

$ yum -y install  ncurses-devel dbus-devel dbus-python texinfo libselinux-devel

Then also for graphics based install 

$ yum -y install libpng-devel giflib-devel libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel gtk+-devel gtk2-devel \
gpm-devel dbus-glib-devel GConf2-devel pkgconfig libXft-devel libXpm-devel

Build #

Linux#

GTK is configured by default. 

$ ./configure --[without-x | with-x-toolkit=gtk]

# if above line doesn't work, do 
$ ./autogen/copy_autogen
$ ./configure --[without-x | with-x-toolkit=gtk]

$ make bootstrap -j4
$ make

# Test
$ src/emacs

# Install
$ sudo make install

BSD#

$ ./configure --with-gif=no

# if above line doesn't work, do
$ ./autogen/copy_autogen
$ ./configure --with-gif=no

$ gmake bootstrap
$ gmake
$ sudo gmake install

Local Install#

To install Emacs locally - 

$ ./configure --prefix=/home/username/local --with-x-toolkit=gtk
$ make bootstrap
$ make
$ make install

Emacs - CategoryArchive.Computing.Linux - CategoryArchive.Computing.Mac