Re: Compiling Emacs from Source

[Kendall Shaw]

On 11/05/2017 02:43 PM, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> > On Nov 6, 2017, at 7:06, Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> wrote:
> >
> > Recently there was some discussion about upgrading Emacs.  Package
> > managers and distros were discussed.
> >
> > I have a more basic question.  The distro I'm using doesn't provide
> > Emacs 25, I'm still on 24.4.  So, I want to compile Emacs 25.
> >
> > The problem for me is the configuration flags.  I don't understand them
> > that well.  What configuration flags would this list recommend?
> Why not use the default ? If the default is not satisfying, you can always 
> reconfigure the build.

Elaborating a little, the configure scripts prints what options it 
chose. It uses autoconf to see what is on your computer. For example:

,/configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/emacs

Prints this for me:


Configured for 'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu'.

  Where should the build process find the source code?    .
  What compiler should emacs be built with?               gcc -g3 -O2
  Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc?             no (only 
before dumping)
  Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers?    no
  Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation?         no
  What window system should Emacs use?                    x11
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          GTK3
  Where do we find X Windows header files?                Standard dirs
  Where do we find X Windows libraries?                   Standard dirs
  Does Emacs use -lXaw3d?                                 no
  Does Emacs use -lXpm?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -ljpeg?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -ltiff?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use a gif library?                           yes -lgif
  Does Emacs use a png library?                           yes -lpng16
  Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2?                                yes
  Does Emacs use cairo?                                   no
  Does Emacs use imagemagick?                             no
  Does Emacs support sound?                               yes
  Does Emacs use -lgpm?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -ldbus?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lgconf?                                 yes
  Does Emacs use GSettings?                               yes
  Does Emacs use a file notification library?             yes -lglibc 
(inotify)
  Does Emacs use access control lists?                    no
  Does Emacs use -lselinux?                               yes
  Does Emacs use -lgnutls?                                yes
  Does Emacs use -lxml2?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lfreetype?                              yes
  Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt?                              no
  Does Emacs use -lotf?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -lxft?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -lsystemd?                               no
  Does Emacs directly use zlib?                           yes
  Does Emacs have dynamic modules support?                no
  Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars?                     yes
  Does Emacs support Xwidgets (requires gtk3)?            no

Kendall