Building Emacs 25 on macOS High Sierra
macOS High Sierra is out and it’s time once again to build Emacs. Nothing has really changed since my 2017 Sierra update, but let’s put it all together…
Before you start, you need a few dependencies:
- Xcode (free in the Mac App Store).
- Autoconf and
Automake. The easiest way
to use Homebrew via
brew install autoconf automake
. If you use another package manager, you know how to work it. If you are all-in on building from source, check out the above guide for details. makeinfo
(part of the Texinfo suite). Apple shipsmakeinfo
, but at some point the system version fell below the minimum version Emacs needs to build.
makeinfo
can also be installed from Homebrew:
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But before building Emacs, you need to get it into your $PATH ahead of /usr/bin/makeinfo
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If you want to build Texinfo from source, you can:
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This installs into /usr/local/bin
so make sure that’s in your $PATH
ahead of /usr/bin
Once you have the prerequisites squared away, the build is the same as it’s been for a while. Get the source:
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Checkout the emacs-25
branch (master is the development branch):
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Configure and compile (make install
build the application bundle, it
doesn’t actually install anything):
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Test:
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And, if it looks good, install it by revealing it in the Finder:
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and dragging Emacs
to the Applications folder.
This builds Emacs 25.3. There are no major new features from 25.1, but there are some important bug and security fixes.
Enjoy your new lightsaber!