remove documentation-string reading hack

[bpt/emacs.git] / INSTALL.REPO

	     Building and Installing Emacs from the Repository

Simply run 'make'.  This should work if your files are freshly checked
out from the repository, and if you have the proper tools installed.
If it doesn't work, or if you have special build requirements, the
following information may be helpful.

Building Emacs from the source-code repository requires some tools
that are not needed when building from a release.  You will need:

autoconf  - at least the version specified near the start of
  configure.ac (in the AC_PREREQ command).
automake  - at least the version specified near the start of
  configure.ac (in the AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE command).
makeinfo  - not strictly necessary, but highly recommended, so that
  you can build the manuals.

To use the autotools, run the following shell command to generate the
'configure' script and some related files:

  $ ./autogen.sh

You can then configure your build as follows:

  $ ./configure

The 'configure' script has many options; run './configure --help' to
see them.  For example, if you want later builds to go faster, albeit
sometimes doing the wrong thing if you update the build procedure, you
can invoke './configure -C'.  After configuring, build Emacs as follows:

  $ make

If you want to install Emacs, type 'make install' instead of 'make' in
the last command.

Occasionally the file 'lisp/loaddefs.el' (and similar automatically
generated files, such as 'esh-groups.el', and '*-loaddefs.el' in some
subdirectories of 'lisp/', e.g., 'mh-e/' and 'calendar/') will need to be
updated to reflect new autoloaded functions.  If you see errors (rather
than warnings) about undefined lisp functions during compilation, that
may be the reason.  Finally, sometimes there can be build failures
related to '*loaddefs.el' (e.g., "required feature `esh-groups' was not
provided").  In that case, follow the instructions below.

To update loaddefs.el (and similar files), do:

  $ cd lisp
  $ make autoloads

If either of the above partial procedures fails, try 'make bootstrap'.
If CPU time is not an issue, 'make bootstrap' is the most thorough way
to rebuild, and avoid any spurious problems.

Users of non-Posix systems (MS-Windows, etc.) should run the
platform-specific configuration scripts ('nt/configure.bat',
'config.bat', etc.) before 'make'; the rest of the procedure is
applicable to those systems as well.

Because the repository version of Emacs is a work in progress, it will
sometimes fail to build.  Please wait a day or so (and check the
archives of the emacs-buildstatus, emacs-devel, and bug-gnu-emacs
mailing lists) before reporting such problems.  In most cases, the
problem is known about and is just waiting for someone to fix it.
This is especially true for Lisp compilation errors, which are almost
never platform-specific.


\f
Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.