nt/INSTALL

   1                       Building and Installing Emacs
   2                   on Windows NT and Windows 95/98/2000
   3
   4   To compile Emacs, you will need either Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 or
   5   later, or a Windows port of GCC 2.95 or later with Mingw and W32 API
   6   support and a port of GNU make.  You can use the Cygwin ports of GCC,
   7   but Emacs requires the Mingw headers and libraries to build.
   8
   9   Please see http://www.mingw.org for pointers to GCC/Mingw binaries.
  10
  11 Configuring:
  12
  13   Configuration of Emacs is now handled by running configure.bat in the
  14   nt subdirectory.  It will detect which compiler you have available,
  15   and generate makefiles accordingly.  You can override the compiler
  16   detection, and control optimization and debug settings, by specifying
  17   options on the command line when invoking configure.
  18
  19   To configure Emacs to build with GCC or MSVC, whichever is available,
  20   simply change to the nt subdirectory and run `configure' with no
  21   options.  To see what options are available, run `configure --help'.
  22
  23 Building:
  24
  25   After running configure, simply run the appropriate `make' program for
  26   your compiler to build Emacs.  For MSVC, this is nmake; for GCC, it is
  27   GNU make.
  28
  29   As the files are compiled, you will see some warning messages
  30   declaring that some functions don't return a value, or that some data
  31   conversions will be lossy, etc.  You can safely ignore these messages.
  32   The warnings may be fixed in the main FSF source at some point, but
  33   until then we will just live with them.
  34
  35 Installing:
  36
  37   To install Emacs after it has compiled, simply run `make install'.
  38
  39   By default, Emacs will be installed in the location where it was
  40   built, but a different location can be specified either using the
  41   --prefix option to configure, or by setting INSTALL_DIR when running
  42   make, like so:
  43
  44      make install INSTALL_DIR=D:/emacs
  45
  46   The install process will run addpm to setup the registry entries, and
  47   to create a Start menu icon for Emacs.
  48
  49 Trouble-shooting:
  50
  51   The main problems that are likely to be encountered when building
  52   Emacs stem from using an old version of GCC, or old Mingw or W32 API
  53   headers.  Additionally, cygwin ports of GNU make may require the Emacs
  54   source tree to be mounted with text!=binary, because the makefiles
  55   generated by configure.bat necessarily use DOS line endings.  Also,
  56   cygwin ports of make must run in UNIX mode, either by specifying
  57   --unix on the command line, or MAKE_MODE=UNIX in the environment.
  58
  59   When configure runs, it attempts to detect when GCC itself, or the
  60   headers it is using, are not suitable for building Emacs.  GCC version
  61   2.95 or later is needed, because that is when the Windows port gained
  62   sufficient support for anonymous structs and unions to cope with some
  63   definitions from winnt.h that are used by addsection.c.  The W32 API
  64   headers that come with Cygwin b20.1 are incomplete, and do not include
  65   some definitions required by addsection.c, for instance.  Also, older
  66   releases of the W32 API headers from Anders Norlander contain a typo
  67   in the definition of IMAGE_FIRST_SECTION in winnt.h, which
  68   addsection.c relies on.  Versions of w32api-xxx.zip from at least
  69   1999-11-18 onwards are okay.
  70
  71 Debugging:
  72
  73   You should be able to debug Emacs using the debugger that is
  74   appropriate for the compiler you used, namely DevStudio or Windbg if
  75   compiled with MSVC, or gdb if compiled with gcc.
  76
  77   Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that reflects
  78   their names in lisp.  The names of the C routines are the lisp names
  79   prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to underscores.  For
  80   example, the function call-process is implemented in C by
  81   Fcall_process.  Similarly, lisp variables are prefixed with 'V', again
  82   with dashes converted to underscores.  These conventions enable you to
  83   easily set breakpoints or examine familiar lisp variables by name.
  84
  85   Since Emacs data is often in the form of a lisp object, and the
  86   Lisp_Object type is difficult to examine manually in the MSVC
  87   debugger, Emacs provides a helper routine called debug_print that
  88   prints out a readable representation of a Lisp_Object.  (If you are
  89   using gdb, there is a .gdbinit file in the src directory which
  90   provides definitions that are useful for examining lisp objects.  The
  91   following tips are mainly of interest when using MSVC.)  The output
  92   from debug_print is sent to stderr, and to the debugger via the
  93   OutputDebugString routine.  The output sent to stderr should be
  94   displayed in the console window that was opened when the emacs.exe
  95   executable was started.  The output sent to the debugger should be
  96   displayed in its "Debug" output window.
  97
  98   When you are in the process of debugging Emacs and you would like to
  99   examine the contents of a Lisp_Object variable, popup the QuickWatch
 100   window (QuickWatch has an eyeglass symbol on its button in the
 101   toolbar).  In the text field at the top of the window, enter
 102   debug_print(<variable>) and hit return.  For example, start and run
 103   Emacs in the debugger until it is waiting for user input.  Then click
 104   on the Break button in the debugger to halt execution.  Emacs should
 105   halt in ZwUserGetMessage waiting for an input event.  Use the Call
 106   Stack window to select the procedure w32_msp_pump up the call stack
 107   (see below for why you have to do this).  Open the QuickWatch window
 108   and enter debug_print(Vexec_path).  Evaluating this expression will
 109   then print out the contents of the lisp variable exec-path.
 110
 111   If QuickWatch reports that the symbol is unknown, then check the call
 112   stack in the Call Stack window.  If the selected frame in the call
 113   stack is not an Emacs procedure, then the debugger won't recognize
 114   Emacs symbols.  Instead, select a frame that is inside an Emacs
 115   procedure and try using debug_print again.
 116
 117   If QuickWatch invokes debug_print but nothing happens, then check the
 118   thread that is selected in the debugger.  If the selected thread is
 119   not the last thread to run (the "current" thread), then it cannot be
 120   used to execute debug_print.  Use the Debug menu to select the current
 121   thread and try using debug_print again.  Note that the debugger halts
 122   execution (e.g., due to a breakpoint) in the context of the current
 123   thread, so this should only be a problem if you've explicitly switched
 124   threads.