Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end of the file for license conditions. Emacs for Windows This README file describes how to set up and run a precompiled distribution of GNU Emacs for Windows. You can find the precompiled distribution on the ftp.gnu.org server and its mirrors: ftp://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 as README.precompiled. 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-n-x86_64-w64-mingw32.zip and emacs-n-i686-w64-mingw32.zip. These are for 64-bit and 32-bit machines respectively. 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 File Explorer and "Extract" by default this will be in a top-level directory with the same name as the zip file. We also provide a set of optional dependencies, in emacs-25-x86_64-deps.zip or emacs-25-i686-deps.zip respectively, which provide Emacs with an number of additional capabilities. To add these, unpack them directly over the emacs directory structure. Finally, and also optionally, you can run the program addpm.exe in the bin subdirectory which will place an icon for Emacs on the start page. Emacs is completely portable. You can create your own shortcut to runemacs.exe and place this where ever you find it convienient, or run it from a USB or network drive without copying or installing anything on the machine itself. * 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. + 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 - The installer that adds Emacs to "Start". + 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. * Optional Dependencies Emacs has 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. In addition, as described, there is a separate dependency bundle providing support for many images formats, TLS, XML parsing and compression. * Installing with an existing MSYS2 installation. You may also use Emacs with an existing MSYS2 installation by simply unpacking the Emacs distribution over MSYS2. You can then use the 'pacman' utility to install dependencies. You should not use the optional dependencies bundle, as this will overwrite MSYS2 files (the dependency bundle derives from MSYS2, but may be a different version). 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 You can type any subset of this list. Once again, when asked whether to proceed with installation, answer Y. * 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 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). * 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 http://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 the mailing list, send email to help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. And a more specific one for 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. * 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 .