Re: mac os x: how do you run emacs in-place?

[David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>]

On Nov 26, 2014, at 4:25 PM, Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> wrote:

> and I don't want to use that, mostly because clicking on file names in
> *Help* buffer finds the installed "el.gz" files instead of the files
> under version control.

Understood.  I don’t think what you want exists as an option so far.  

>> only the first “make install” is necessary
> 
> this is not true because the executable is copied, not symlinked.

I think I am right because a simple “make” will copy it again.

See nextstep/Makefile, line 29 (target ${ns_appbindir}/Emacs, which is required by “all”).
And this makefile is called via the “ns-app” target in src/Makefile, which is put in $OTHER_FILES, required by “all” there (and not just “install”).

> However, you gave me an idea:
> I will go through nextstep/Emacs.app and replace files and directories
> with symlinks back into the tree.

If this works well, you could get the ns-app target to make symlinks in nextstep (put code as a new target in nextstep/Makefile perhaps).  Then, “make install” will do what it does now, but if one wants to run the executable directly, this could be conveniently done after a “make”.