Building and Installing Emacs
on Windows NT and Windows 95
You need a compiler package to build and install Emacs on NT or Win95.
If you don't have one, precompiled versions are available in
ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu/pub/ntemacs/<version>.
Configuring:
(1) In previous versions, you needed to edit makefile.def
to reflect the compiler package that you are using. You should no
longer have to do this if you have defined the INCLUDE and LIB
environment variables, as is customary for use with Windows compilers.
(Unless you are using MSVCNT 1.1, in which case you will need
to set MSVCNT11 to be a non-zero value at the top of makefile.def.)
Previous versions also required the use of DOS batch files to set
environment variables before running or debugging Emacs. As of
20.6, Emacs will default to sensible values if the environment
variables are not set, so these batch files are no longer included
with the distribution. Old emacs.bat and debug.bat files will
still work if you have a special need for them, provided the paths
are updated for this version of Emacs.
(2) Choose the directory into which Emacs will be installed, and
edit makefile.def to define INSTALL_DIR to be this directory.
(Alternatively, if you have INSTALL_DIR set as an environment
variable, the build process will ignore the value in makefile.def
and use the value of the environment variable instead.) Note
that if it is not installed in the directory in which it is built,
the ~16 MB of lisp files will be copied into the installation directory.
Also, makefile.def is sometimes unpacked read-only; use
> attrib -r makefile.def
to make it writable.
(3) You may need to edit nt/paths.h to specify some other device
instead of `C:'.
Building:
(4) The target to compile the sources is "all", and is recursive starting
one directory up. The makefiles for the NT port are in files named
"makefile.nt". To get things started, type in this directory:
> nmake -f makefile.nt all
or use the ebuild.bat file.
When the files are compiled, you will see some warning messages declaring
that some functions don't return a value, or that some data conversions
will be lossy, etc. You can safely ignore these messages. The warnings
may be fixed in the main FSF source at some point, but until then we
will just live with them.
NOTE: You should not have to edit src\paths.h to get Emacs to run
correctly. All of the variables in src\paths.h are configured
during start up using the nt\emacs.bat file (which gets installed
as bin\emacs.bat -- see below).
Installing:
(5) The install process will install the files necessary to run Emacs in
INSTALL_DIR (which may be the directory in which it was built),
and create a program manager/folder icon in a folder called GNU Emacs.
From this directory, type:
> nmake -f makefile.nt install
or use the install.bat file.
(6) Create the Emacs startup file. This file can be named either .emacs,
as on Unix, or _emacs. Note that Emacs requires the environment
variable HOME to be set in order for it to locate the startup file.
HOME could be set, for example, in the System panel of the Control
Panel on NT, or in autoexec.bat on Win95.
(7) Start up Emacs.
The installation process should have run the addpm.exe program, which
does two things. First, it will create a set of registry keys that
tell Emacs where to find its support files (lisp, info, etc.).
Second, it will create a folder containing an icon linked to
runemacs.exe (a wrapper program for invoking Emacs). You can
also invoke addpm.exe by hand, giving the absolute directory name
of the installation directory as the first argument:
addpm.exe %INSTALL_DIR%
Now, to run Emacs, simply click on the icon in the newly created
folder or invoke runemacs.exe from a command prompt.
Debugging:
(8) You should be able to debug Emacs using the MSVC debugger as you would
any other program.
Emacs functions implemented in C use a naming convention that
reflects their names in lisp. The names of the C routines are
the lisp names prefixed with 'F', and with dashes converted to
underscores. For example, the function call-process is implemented
in C by Fcall_process. Similarly, lisp variables are prefixed
with 'V', again with dashes converted to underscores. These
conventions enable you to easily set breakpoints or examine familiar
lisp variables by name.
Since Emacs data is often in the form of a lisp object, and the
Lisp_Object type is difficult to examine manually in the debugger,
Emacs provides a helper routine called debug_print that prints out
a readable representation of a Lisp_Object. The output from
debug_print is sent to stderr, and to the debugger via the
OutputDebugString routine. The output sent to stderr should be
displayed in the console window that was opened when the emacs.exe
executable was started. The output sent to the debugger should be
displayed in its "Debug" output window.
When you are in the process of debugging Emacs and you would like
to examine the contents of a Lisp_Object variable, popup the
QuickWatch window (QuickWatch has an eyeglass symbol on its button
in the toolbar). In the text field at the top of the window, enter
debug_print(<variable>) and hit return. For example, start
and run Emacs in the debugger until it is waiting for user input.
Then click on the Break button in the debugger to halt execution.
Emacs should halt in ZwUserGetMessage waiting for an input event.
Use the Call Stack window to select the procedure w32_msp_pump
up the call stack (see below for why you have to do this). Open
the QuickWatch window and enter debug_print(Vexec_path). Evaluating
this expression will then print out the contents of the lisp
variable exec-path.
If QuickWatch reports that the symbol is unknown, then check the
call stack in the Call Stack window. If the selected frame in the
call stack is not an Emacs procedure, then the debugger won't
recognize Emacs symbols. Instead, select a frame that is inside
an Emacs procedure and try using debug_print again.
If QuickWatch invokes debug_print but nothing happens, then check
the thread that is selected in the debugger. If the selected
thread is not the last thread to run (the "current" thread), then
it cannot be used to execute debug_print. Use the Debug menu
to select the current thread and try using debug_print again.
Note that the debugger halts execution (e.g., due to a breakpoint)
in the context of the current thread, so this should only be a problem
if you've explicitly switched threads.