| 1 | Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| 2 | See the end of the file for license conditions. |
| 3 | |
| 4 | Precompiled Distributions of |
| 5 | Emacs for Windows |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Version 24.1 |
| 8 | |
| 9 | January 1, 2011 |
| 10 | |
| 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-24.1.tar.gz. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing |
| 20 | your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't |
| 21 | already): |
| 22 | |
| 23 | http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html |
| 24 | |
| 25 | * IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER |
| 26 | |
| 27 | If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of |
| 28 | Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL. For instance, |
| 29 | if you put the emacs-24.1-bin-i386.tar.gz file from this directory on |
| 30 | an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of |
| 31 | the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-24.1.tar.gz). |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we |
| 34 | might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the |
| 35 | old binaries. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | |
| 38 | * Files in this directory |
| 39 | |
| 40 | + emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip |
| 41 | Windows binaries of Emacs-24.1, with all lisp code and documentation |
| 42 | included. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Download this file if you want a single installation package, and |
| 45 | are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After |
| 46 | unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have |
| 47 | Emacs add icons to the Start Menu. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to |
| 50 | unpack the source distribution on top of this installation. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | + emacs-24.1-barebin-i386.zip |
| 53 | Windows binaries of Emacs-24.1, without lisp code or documentation. |
| 54 | |
| 55 | Download this file if you already have the source distribution. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Unpack this over the top of the source distribution. It contains the |
| 58 | bin subdirectory and etc/DOC file. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | + libxpm-3.5.7-w32-src.zip |
| 61 | Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.7 on Windows. Contains |
| 62 | a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for |
| 63 | generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the |
| 64 | source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from |
| 65 | libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip |
| 66 | and emacs-24.1-barebin-i386.zip. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | * Prerequisites for running Emacs on Windows 9X |
| 69 | |
| 70 | Using Emacs in GUI mode on Windows 95/98/Me requires the UNICOWS.DLL |
| 71 | dynamic library, which provides MSLU, the Microsoft Unicode Layer |
| 72 | for Windows 9X. You can freely download it from the Microsoft site. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | * Image support |
| 75 | |
| 76 | Emacs 24.1 contains support for images, however for most image |
| 77 | formats supporting libraries are required. This distribution has |
| 78 | been tested with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for |
| 79 | Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php), and the libraries |
| 80 | found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image |
| 81 | formats are supported: |
| 82 | |
| 83 | PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for |
| 84 | the black and white versions of the toolbar icons. |
| 85 | |
| 86 | XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org |
| 87 | release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but |
| 88 | can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll, |
| 89 | libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.4 or later, which will |
| 92 | be named libpng14.dll or libpng14-14.dll. LibPNG requires zlib, |
| 93 | which should come from the same source as you got libpng. |
| 94 | Starting with Emacs 23.3, the precompiled Emacs binaries are |
| 95 | built with libpng 1.4.x and later, and are incompatible with |
| 96 | earlier versions of libpng DLLs. So if you have libpng 1.2.x, |
| 97 | the PNG support will not work, and you will have to download |
| 98 | newer versions. |
| 99 | |
| 100 | JPEG: requires the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later, |
| 101 | which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll. |
| 102 | |
| 103 | TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll |
| 104 | or libtiff.dll. |
| 105 | |
| 106 | GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be |
| 107 | called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll. |
| 108 | |
| 109 | SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you |
| 110 | compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the |
| 111 | dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome |
| 112 | as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many |
| 113 | sample images. |
| 114 | |
| 115 | * Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format |
| 116 | |
| 117 | Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar |
| 118 | file (*.tar.gz). Because Emacs is quite large and therefore |
| 119 | difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows |
| 120 | binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source |
| 121 | plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking |
| 122 | over the top of the source distribution. Formerly, we used the same |
| 123 | .tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with |
| 124 | .zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these |
| 125 | natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip |
| 126 | files. |
| 127 | |
| 128 | * Distributions for non-x86 platforms |
| 129 | |
| 130 | Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older |
| 131 | platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand, |
| 132 | and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you |
| 133 | are willing to help port Emacs 24 to 64 bit versions of Windows, |
| 134 | your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list. |
| 135 | |
| 136 | * Unpacking distributions |
| 137 | |
| 138 | Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file |
| 139 | format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU |
| 140 | programs, for example: |
| 141 | |
| 142 | Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/ |
| 143 | GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ |
| 144 | |
| 145 | Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also |
| 146 | able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical |
| 147 | program that is able to handle many archive formats. |
| 148 | |
| 149 | Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window. Decide on a directory in which |
| 150 | to place Emacs. Move the distribution to that directory, and then |
| 151 | unpack it as follows. |
| 152 | |
| 153 | If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar |
| 154 | file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags |
| 155 | to extract the files from the tar file: |
| 156 | |
| 157 | % gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf - |
| 158 | |
| 159 | You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the |
| 160 | modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a |
| 161 | broken pipe. These messages are harmless and you can ignore them. On |
| 162 | Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed |
| 163 | form, taking up less space on disk. Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and |
| 164 | 98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the |
| 165 | djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one |
| 166 | step: |
| 167 | |
| 168 | % djtarnt -x some.tar.gz |
| 169 | |
| 170 | You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using |
| 171 | djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless). |
| 172 | |
| 173 | Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org |
| 174 | if you do not already have other tools to do this. |
| 175 | |
| 176 | % unzip some.zip |
| 177 | |
| 178 | The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org |
| 179 | if you do not already have other tools to do this. |
| 180 | |
| 181 | % unzip some.zip |
| 182 | |
| 183 | Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should |
| 184 | have the following subdirectories: |
| 185 | |
| 186 | bin etc info lisp site-lisp |
| 187 | |
| 188 | |
| 189 | * Unpacking with other tools |
| 190 | |
| 191 | If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check |
| 192 | the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted: |
| 193 | |
| 194 | + Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will |
| 195 | be unusable. Older versions of WinZip would enable this |
| 196 | translation by default when unpacking .tar files. If you are |
| 197 | using WinZip, disable it. (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do |
| 198 | not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.) |
| 199 | |
| 200 | + Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there |
| 201 | should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to |
| 202 | abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking |
| 203 | and Emacs will not start. |
| 204 | |
| 205 | + Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser. Some |
| 206 | proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might |
| 207 | like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser |
| 208 | has this bug. |
| 209 | |
| 210 | + I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar |
| 211 | corrupts the executables. Use the latest version from the gnuwin32 |
| 212 | site or another port of tar instead. |
| 213 | |
| 214 | If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are |
| 215 | still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information |
| 216 | below. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | |
| 219 | * Compiling from source |
| 220 | |
| 221 | If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source |
| 222 | distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled |
| 223 | distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed |
| 224 | directions. It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW |
| 225 | support to compile the source. The port of GCC included in Cygwin |
| 226 | is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble |
| 227 | since some builds of GNU make aren't supported. |
| 228 | |
| 229 | |
| 230 | * Further information |
| 231 | |
| 232 | If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing |
| 233 | your favorite web browser to following the document (if you haven't |
| 234 | already): |
| 235 | |
| 236 | http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html |
| 237 | |
| 238 | This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information |
| 239 | about the Windows port and related software packages. Note that as |
| 240 | most of the information in that FAQ is for earlier versions, so some |
| 241 | information may not be relevant to Emacs-24.1. |
| 242 | |
| 243 | In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues |
| 244 | related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the |
| 245 | list, see this Web page: |
| 246 | |
| 247 | http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows |
| 248 | |
| 249 | To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to |
| 250 | help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.) |
| 251 | To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you |
| 252 | find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as |
| 253 | explained there. |
| 254 | |
| 255 | Another valuable source of information and help which should not be |
| 256 | overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs. |
| 257 | These are particularly good for help with general issues which aren't |
| 258 | specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use |
| 259 | for seeking help are: |
| 260 | |
| 261 | gnu.emacs.help |
| 262 | comp.emacs |
| 263 | |
| 264 | There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or |
| 265 | updated Emacs packages on this group: |
| 266 | |
| 267 | gnu.emacs.sources |
| 268 | |
| 269 | Enjoy! |
| 270 | |
| 271 | Jason Rumney |
| 272 | (jasonr@gnu.org) |
| 273 | |
| 274 | Most of this README was contributed by former maintainer Andrew Innes |
| 275 | (andrewi@gnu.org) |
| 276 | |
| 277 | \f |
| 278 | This file is part of GNU Emacs. |
| 279 | |
| 280 | GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify |
| 281 | it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by |
| 282 | the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or |
| 283 | (at your option) any later version. |
| 284 | |
| 285 | GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
| 286 | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| 287 | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the |
| 288 | GNU General Public License for more details. |
| 289 | |
| 290 | You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| 291 | along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. |