Copyright (C) 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.
Precompiled Distributions of
Emacs for Windows
Version 24.3
March 18, 2013
This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on
Windows (versions before Windows 95 and NT4 are not supported).
This port is a part of the standard GNU Emacs distribution from the
Free Software Foundation; the precompiled distributions are provided
here for convenience since the majority of Windows users are not
accustomed to compiling programs themselves. Corresponding source
can be found in the parent directory in emacs-24.3.tar.gz.
If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't
already):
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
* IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER
If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of
Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL. For instance,
if you put the emacs-24.3-bin-i386.zip file from this directory on
an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of
the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-24.3.tar.gz).
Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we
might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the
old binaries.
* Files in this directory
+ emacs-24.3-bin-i386.zip
Windows binaries of Emacs-24.3, with all lisp code and documentation
included.
Download this file if you want a single installation package, and
are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After
unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have
Emacs add icons to the Start Menu.
If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to
unpack the source distribution on top of this installation.
+ libXpm-3.5.8-w32-src.zip
Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.8 on Windows. Contains
a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for
generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the
source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from
libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-24.3-bin-i386.zip.
* Prerequisites for running Emacs on Windows 9X
Using Emacs in GUI mode on Windows 95/98/Me requires the UNICOWS.DLL
dynamic library, which provides MSLU, the Microsoft Unicode Layer
for Windows 9X. You can freely download it from the Microsoft site.
* Image support
Emacs 24.3 contains support for images, however for most image
formats supporting libraries are required. This distribution has
been tested with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for
Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php), and the libraries
found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image
formats are supported:
PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for
the black and white versions of the toolbar icons.
XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org
release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but
can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll,
libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll.
PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.4 or later, which will
be named libpng14.dll or libpng14-14.dll. LibPNG requires zlib,
which should come from the same source as you got libpng.
Starting with Emacs 23.3, the precompiled Emacs binaries are
built with libpng 1.4.x and later, and are incompatible with
earlier versions of libpng DLLs. So if you have libpng 1.2.x,
the PNG support will not work, and you will have to download
newer versions.
JPEG: requires the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later,
which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll.
TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll
or libtiff.dll.
GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be
called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll.
SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you
compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the
dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome
as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many
sample images.
* XML support
In order to support XML via libxml2 at runtime, a libxml2-enabled
Emacs must be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure
to do so is not an error, but libxml2 features won't be available to
the running session.
You can get pre-built binaries (including any required DLL and the
header files) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/.
* Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format
Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar
file (*.tar.gz). Because Emacs is quite large and therefore
difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows
binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source
plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking
over the top of the source distribution. Formerly, we used the same
.tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with
.zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these
natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip
files.
* Distributions for non-x86 platforms
Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older
platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand,
and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you
are willing to help port Emacs 24 to 64 bit versions of Windows,
your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list.
* Unpacking distributions
Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file
format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU
programs, for example:
Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/
GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also
able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical
program that is able to handle many archive formats.
Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window. Decide on a directory in which
to place Emacs. Move the distribution to that directory, and then
unpack it as follows.
If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar
file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags
to extract the files from the tar file:
% gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf -
You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the
modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a
broken pipe. These messages are harmless and you can ignore them. On
Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed
form, taking up less space on disk. Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and
98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the
djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one
step:
% djtarnt -x some.tar.gz
You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using
djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless).
Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
if you do not already have other tools to do this.
% unzip some.zip
The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
if you do not already have other tools to do this.
% unzip some.zip
Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should
have the following subdirectories:
bin etc info lisp site-lisp
* Unpacking with other tools
If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check
the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted:
+ Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will
be unusable. Older versions of WinZip would enable this
translation by default when unpacking .tar files. If you are
using WinZip, disable it. (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do
not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.)
+ Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there
should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to
abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking
and Emacs will not start.
+ Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser. Some
proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might
like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser
has this bug.
+ I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar
corrupts the executables. Use the latest version from the gnuwin32
site or another port of tar instead.
If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are
still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information
below.
* Compiling from source
If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source
distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled
distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed
directions. It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
support to compile the source. The port of GCC included in Cygwin
is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble
since some builds of GNU make aren't supported.
* Further information
If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
your favorite web browser to following the document (if you haven't
already):
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information
about the Windows port and related software packages. Note that as
most of the information in that FAQ is for earlier versions, so some
information may not be relevant to Emacs-24.3.
In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues
related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the
list, see this Web page:
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows
To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to
help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.)
To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you
find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as
explained there.
Another valuable source of information and help which should not be
overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs.
These are particularly good for help with general issues which aren't
specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use
for seeking help are:
gnu.emacs.help
comp.emacs
There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or
updated Emacs packages on this group:
gnu.emacs.sources
Enjoy!
Most of this README was contributed by former maintainers Andrew Innes
(andrewi@gnu.org) and Jason Rumney (jasonr@gnu.org).
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/.
The GNU Emacs Manual and An Introduction to Emacs Lisp are now available from the FSF online shop.
Name Last modified Size
Parent Directory -
README 19-Jun-2013 02:43 12K
README.sig 19-Jun-2013 02:43 490
emacs-22.3-barebin-i386.zip 06-Sep-2008 22:32 4.6M
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