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Copyright (C) 2001-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.
Emacs version 28.0.50 for MS-Windows
This README file describes how to set up and run a precompiled
distribution of the latest version of GNU Emacs for MS-Windows. You
can find the precompiled distribution on the ftp.gnu.org server and
its mirrors:
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/
This server contains other distributions, including the full Emacs
source distribution, as well as older releases of Emacs for Windows.
Information on how to compile Emacs from sources on Windows is in
the files README and INSTALL in the nt/ sub-directory of the
top-level Emacs directory in the source distribution, as is this
file under the name README.W32. If you received this file as part
of the Emacs source distribution, and are looking for information on
how to build Emacs on MS-Windows, please read those 2 files and not
this one.
* Preliminaries
There are two binary distributions named
emacs-VER-x86_64.zip and emacs-VER-i686.zip,
where VER is the Emacs version. These are 64-bit and 32-bit builds,
respectively. If you are running a 32-bit version of MS-Windows,
you need to install the 32-bit build; users of 64-bit Windows can
use either build, but we recommend to install the 64-bit one, as it
will be able to edit larger buffers and will generally run faster.
The binary distribution has these top-level directories:
+ bin
+ libexec
+ share
+ var
* Setting up Emacs
To install Emacs, simply unpack the binary package into a directory
of your choice. If you use the Windows Explorer and its "Extract"
action, by default this will be in a top-level directory with the
same name as the zip file.
Emacs is completely portable. You can create your own shortcut to
runemacs.exe and place this wherever you find it convenient (the
desktop and/or the Taskbar), or run it from a USB or network drive
without copying or installing anything on the machine itself.
It is also possible, although not recommended to use the program
bin/addpm.exe which will place an icon for Emacs on the start page.
* Prerequisites for Windows 9X
The 32-bit build supports MS-Windows 9X (Windows 95/98/Me). To run
Emacs on these versions of Windows, you will need to have the
Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU) installed. It can be downloaded
from the Microsoft site, and comes in a form of a single dynamic
library called UNICOWS.DLL. If this library is not accessible to
Emacs on Windows 9X, it will pop up a dialog saying that it cannot
find the UNICOWS library, and will refuse to start up.
* Starting Emacs
To run Emacs, simply select Emacs from the Start Menu, or invoke
runemacs.exe directly from Explorer or from a command prompt. This
will start Emacs in its default GUI mode, ready to use. If you have
never used Emacs before, you should follow the tutorial at this
point (select Emacs Tutorial from the Help menu), since Emacs is
quite different from ordinary Windows applications in many respects.
If you want to use Emacs in tty or character mode within a command
window, you can start it by typing "emacs -nw" at the command prompt.
(Obviously, you need to ensure that the Emacs bin subdirectory is in
your Path first, or specify the path to emacs.exe.) The -nw
(non-windowed) mode of operation is most useful if you have a telnet
server on your machine, allowing you to run Emacs remotely.
* EXE files included
Emacs comes with the following executable files in the bin directory.
+ emacs.exe - The main Emacs executable. As this is designed to run
as both a text-mode application (emacs -nw) and as a GUI application,
it will pop up a command prompt window if run directly from Explorer.
+ runemacs.exe - A wrapper for running Emacs as a GUI application
without popping up a command prompt window. If you create a
desktop shortcut for invoking Emacs, make it point to this
executable, not to emacs.exe. If you pin Emacs to the task bar,
edit the properties of the pinned shortcut (with Shift-right mouse
click) to point to this executable.
+ emacsclient.exe - A command-line client program that can
communicate with a running Emacs process. See the `Emacs Server'
node of the Emacs manual.
+ emacsclientw.exe - A version of emacsclient that does not open
a command-line window.
+ addpm.exe - A basic installer that adds Emacs to "Start" menus and
adds Emacs-related entries to the Windows Registry.
+ ctags.exe, etags.exe - Tools for generating tag files. See the
`Tags' node of the Emacs manual.
+ ebrowse.exe - A tool for generating C++ browse information. See the
`Ebrowse' manual.
Several helper programs are in a version-specific subdirectory of
the libexec directory:
+ cmdproxy.exe - Used internally by Emacs to work around problems with
the native shells in various versions of Windows.
+ ddeclient.exe - A tool for interacting with DDE servers. To be
invoked as "ddeclient SERVER [TOPIC]", where SERVER is the DDE
server name, and sends each line of its standard input to the DDE
server using the DdeClientTransaction API. This program is
supposed to be invoked via the 'call-process-region' Emacs
primitive.
+ hexl.exe - A tool for producing hex dumps of binary files. See the
`Editing Binary Files' node of the Emacs manual.
+ movemail.exe - A helper application for safely moving mail from
a mail spool or POP server to a local user mailbox. See the
`Movemail' node of the Emacs manual.
+ profile.exe - A helper program that generates periodic events for
profiling Emacs Lisp code.
+ update-game-score.exe - A utility for updating the score files of
Emacs games.
* Emacs without optional dependencies
The files emacs-VER-x86_64.zip and emacs-VER-i686.zip contain a
large number of optional dependencies for Emacs.
Emacs has a number of optional features which use these additional
dependencies. They enable support for the following:
- displaying inline images of many types (PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, SVG)
- SSL/TLS secure network communications (HTTPS, IMAPS, etc.)
- HTML and XML parsing (necessary for the built-in EWW browser)
- built-in decompression of compressed text
If you do not want these files (if you have them already for
instance, or you want the smallest possible Emacs), then you may use
the files emacs-VER-x86_64-no-deps.zip or
emacs-VER-i686-no-deps.zip. The dependency files are also available
as emacs-MVER-x86_64-deps.zip and emacs-MVER-i686-deps.zip. Source
code for these dependencies is available as
emacs-26-deps-mingw-w64-src.zip.
All distributions of Emacs have built in support for XBM and
PPM/PGM/PBM images, and the libXpm library is bundled, providing XPM
support (required for color toolbar icons and splash screen).
Source for libXpm should be available from the same place from which
you got this binary distribution.
* Installing Emacs with an existing MSYS2 installation
You may also use Emacs with an existing MSYS2 installation by
unpacking the emacs-VER-x86_64-no-deps.zip over the MSYS2
distribution. You should not use the emacs-VER-x86_64.zip from this
site, as this will overwrite MSYS2 files (the dependency bundle
derives from MSYS2, but will be from a different version). You can
then use the 'pacman' utility to install dependencies.
Some of the optional libraries need to be of certain versions to
work with your Emacs binary. Make sure you install those versions
of dependencies, and no others. Emacs variables such as
libpng-version and libjpeg-version tell what versions of the
corresponding libraries are expected by Emacs. (We recommend that
you use the dependency bundle, where these issues are always
resolved.)
To install the optional libraries, start the MSYS2 Bash window and
type the following command:
pacman -S PACKAGES
where PACKAGES is the list of packages you want to install. The
full list is as follows:
mingw-w64-x86_64-giflib
mingw-w64-x86_64-gnutls
mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo
mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng
mingw-w64-x86_64-librsvg
mingw-w64-x86_64-libtiff
mingw-w64-x86_64-libxml2
mingw-w64-x86_64-xpm-nox
mingw-w64-x86_64-lcms2
You can type any subset of this list. When asked whether to proceed
with installation, answer Y.
Alternatively, you could install the packages manually from this
page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/REPOS/MINGW/x86_64/
However, the packages there are not self-contained, so you will need
to manually download all their dependencies as well.
* Uninstalling Emacs
If you should need to uninstall Emacs, simply delete all the files
and subdirectories from the directory where it was unpacked (Emacs
does not install or update any files in system directories or
anywhere else).
If you ran the addpm.exe program to create the Start menu icon, this
can be removed by right-clicking and "Uninstall".
Finally, addpm.exe also creates a few registry entries; these can be
safely left, but if you really wish to remove them, all of the
settings are written under the Software\GNU\Emacs key in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, or if you didn't have administrator privileges
when you installed, the same key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Just delete
the whole Software\GNU\Emacs key.
* Troubleshooting
Some known problems and their solutions can be found in the file
etc\PROBLEMS in the unpacked Emacs distribution.
Virus scanners
Some virus scanners interfere with Emacs' use of subprocesses. If you
are unable to use subprocesses and you use Dr. Solomon's WinGuard or
McAfee's Vshield, turn off "Scan all files" (WinGuard) or "boot sector
scanning" (McAfee exclusion properties).
Windows 9X
On Windows 9X, make sure you have the UNICOWS.DLL library either in
the same directory where you have emacs.exe or in the directory
where system-wide DLLs are kept.
* Further information
The Emacs User manual describes Windows-specific issues in the
appendix named "Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS". You can read
it in Emacs by typing
C-h r g Microsoft Windows RET
This appendix is also available (as part of the entire manual) at
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html#Microsoft-Windows
In addition to the manual, there is a mailing list for help with
Emacs here:
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
To ask questions on this mailing list, send email to
help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
A mailing list for issues specifically related to the MS-Windows port
of Emacs is here:
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows
To ask questions on this mailing list, send email to
help-emacs-windows@gnu.org.
* Reporting bugs
If you encounter a bug in this port of Emacs, we would like to hear
about it. First check the FAQ on the web page above to see if the bug
is already known and if there are any workarounds. Then check whether
the bug has something to do with code in your `.emacs' file, e.g. by
invoking Emacs with the "-Q" option.
If you decide that it is a bug in Emacs, use the built in bug
reporting facility to report it (from the menu: Help -> Send Bug Report).
If you have not yet configured Emacs for mail, then when you press
C-c C-c to send the report, it will ask you to paste the text of the
report into your mail client. If the bug is related to subprocesses,
also specify which shell you are using (e.g., include the values of
`shell-file-name' and `explicit-shell-file-name' in your message).
Enjoy!
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 <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
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