Building Emacs

Building Emacs

[Nick Roberts]

In the past I would use "make recompile" in the lisp directory followed by
"make" in the emacs directory because it was much faster than doing a
bootstrap, and because I have my own experimental versions of files in the lisp
directory that I don't want autoloading.

Now I'm not sure what "make" does.  It outputs "nil" so many times that any
meaningful message flashes by and it insists on generating autoloads for all
files in the lisp directory.

Is there a way to get the old behaviour.  It left problems from time to time
but I could generally see how to fix them.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: Building Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> In the past I would use "make recompile" in the lisp directory
> followed by "make" in the emacs directory because it was much faster
> than doing a bootstrap, and because I have my own experimental
> versions of files in the lisp directory that I don't want autoloading.

> Now I'm not sure what "make" does.

It does pretty much what you did.

> It outputs "nil" so many times that any meaningful message flashes by

I don't see that.  Could you post some example session?

> and it insists on generating autoloads for all files in the
> lisp directory.

That was also the case in the past, except that your recipe simply never
updated the loaddefs.el file.

> Is there a way to get the old behaviour.  It left problems from time to time
> but I could generally see how to fix them.

How 'bout adding "no-autoloads" annotations to the files you don't
want autoloaded?


        Stefan

Re: Building Emacs

[joakim]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> In the past I would use "make recompile" in the lisp directory
>> followed by "make" in the emacs directory because it was much faster
>> than doing a bootstrap, and because I have my own experimental
>> versions of files in the lisp directory that I don't want autoloading.
>
>> Now I'm not sure what "make" does.
>
> It does pretty much what you did.
>
>> It outputs "nil" so many times that any meaningful message flashes by
>
> I don't see that.  Could you post some example session?

I think maybe Nick applied an early version of the window-group patch,
which contains some debug statements I forgot.

Could you try removing those, Nick?

>
>> and it insists on generating autoloads for all files in the
>> lisp directory.
>
> That was also the case in the past, except that your recipe simply never
> updated the loaddefs.el file.
>
>> Is there a way to get the old behaviour.  It left problems from time to time
>> but I could generally see how to fix them.
>
> How 'bout adding "no-autoloads" annotations to the files you don't
> want autoloaded?
>
>
>         Stefan
>
-- 
Joakim Verona

Re: Building Emacs

[Nick Roberts]

 > >> It outputs "nil" so many times that any meaningful message flashes by
 > >
 > > I don't see that.  Could you post some example session?
 > 
 > I think maybe Nick applied an early version of the window-group patch,
 > which contains some debug statements I forgot.
 > 
 > Could you try removing those, Nick?

Yes, you're right.  Thanks.  However, it doesn't explain why it tries to
bootstrap when I just do make:

   nickrob@kahikatea:~/emacs/build$ make
   boot=bootstrap-emacs;                         \
   ...

I don't recall this happening before.  I had presumed that this is due to this
change:

2008-06-22  Stefan Monnier  <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>

	* Makefile.in (${lisp} ${SOME_MACHINE_LISP}, ../lisp/loaddefs.el):
	Use $(BOOTSTRAPEMACS) rather than witness-emacs.

Maybe it has something to do with using a separate build directory
(~/emacs/build/) to the source (~/emacs/src)

 > >
 > >> and it insists on generating autoloads for all files in the
 > >> lisp directory.
 > >
 > > That was also the case in the past, except that your recipe simply never
 > > updated the loaddefs.el file.

I'm not sure what you're saying but I'm saying the behaviour appears to have
changed.

 > >> Is there a way to get the old behaviour.  It left problems from time to time
 > >> but I could generally see how to fix them.
 > >
 > > How 'bout adding "no-autoloads" annotations to the files you don't
 > > want autoloaded?

I could do but it's more inconvenient than my previous method.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: Building Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> Maybe it has something to do with using a separate build directory
> (~/emacs/build/) to the source (~/emacs/src)

It could very well be: I never used a separate build directory, so
I don't know what goes where and what can be assumed to be where, so
whenever I touch the Makefiles, I tend to introduce problems in
this area.
The fact that the Makefiles seem to contain somewhere around 0 bytes of
comments about this doesn't help, of course.

>> >> and it insists on generating autoloads for all files in the
>> >> lisp directory.
>> > That was also the case in the past, except that your recipe simply never
>> > updated the loaddefs.el file.
> I'm not sure what you're saying but I'm saying the behaviour appears to have
> changed.

No doubt, it has changed.

>> >> Is there a way to get the old behaviour.  It left problems from
>> >> time to time but I could generally see how to fix them.
>> > How 'bout adding "no-autoloads" annotations to the files you don't
>> > want autoloaded?
> I could do but it's more inconvenient than my previous method.

What can i say: the Makefile is designed to build Emacs, not some local
derivative.  This said, I have my own local derivative with about
1MB's worth of changes, and I never needed to silence autoloads, so
I find your situation rather odd.  Of course, you can also hack your
local derivative to use different Makefile rules ;-)


        Stefan

building emacs

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

I'm building emacs with
./configure --with-ns
make install

When I update my git repository (presumably with  git pull origin master), do I need to reconfigure the build with the command *each time* I update the code ? Or can I proceed directly to make install ?

Also, are there ways to do incremental builds ? Where only the modified parts are built and the rest stays as it were ?

Jean-Christophe 

Re: building emacs

[Tim Visher]

I'm not an authoritative source but:

1. I'd generally always run ./configure again no matter what the software
is unless I absolutely knew the ins and outs of the configure script and
knew nothing had changed.

2. make is an incremental build system generally, though emacs use of it
might not be such. Have you tested it? Just run make and then modify a
single source file and run make again and see what happens.

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 6:52 AM, Jean-Christophe Helary <
jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm building emacs with
> ./configure --with-ns
> make install
>
> When I update my git repository (presumably with  git pull origin master),
> do I need to reconfigure the build with the command *each time* I update
> the code ? Or can I proceed directly to make install ?
>
> Also, are there ways to do incremental builds ? Where only the modified
> parts are built and the rest stays as it were ?
>
> Jean-Christophe
>

Re: building emacs

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On May 31, 2017, at 20:19, Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm not an authoritative source but:
> 
> 1. I'd generally always run ./configure again no matter what the software is unless I absolutely knew the ins and outs of the configure script and knew nothing had changed.

OK.

> 2. make is an incremental build system generally, though emacs use of it might not be such. Have you tested it? Just run make and then modify a single source file and run make again and see what happens.

I did build emacs twice today and the second time did not feel noticeably shorter than the first. But I'll check again. I thought maybe there was a parameter to make to have it work incrementally.

Thank you.

Jean-Christophe 

Re: building emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 19:52:31 +0900
> 
> I'm building emacs with
> ./configure --with-ns
> make install
> 
> When I update my git repository (presumably with  git pull origin master), do I need to reconfigure the build with the command *each time* I update the code ? Or can I proceed directly to make install ?

No.  Yes.

> Also, are there ways to do incremental builds ? Where only the modified parts are built and the rest stays as it were ?

That's the default, that's why we use the Make utility.  Or maybe I
don't understand what you mean by "incremental builds".

P.S.  IMO, these are not questions for this list.

Re: building emacs

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On May 31, 2017, at 20:26, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> That's the default, that's why we use the Make utility.  Or maybe I
> don't understand what you mean by "incremental builds".

You understood right. I'm the one who did not understand what make was doing.

> P.S.  IMO, these are not questions for this list.

Thank you. Wherever I write, everybody seems like an uber-geek so I thought this not-strictly "development" related question was fine here too.

Jean-Christophe 

Re: building emacs

[Emanuel Berg]

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> You understood right. I'm the one who did not
> understand what make was doing.

make is the ever-lasting workhorse of building
all kinds of computer projects, not just
programming ones, and it is not
that complicated.

It seems every generation of programmers has
a bunch of people who tries to make a new and
better make, but it is still there while their
projects are long gone.

make has basically three components, a target,
which is the file you wish to create, its
dependencies, which are files from which it
draws data, and a shell command which will
create the target from that data. This is
specified in a Makefile.

The incremental part of it is that whenever you
create a target, make checks if the target
already exists. If it does, make goes on to
check if the dependencies has been changed
since the target was created. If they have,
obviously the target isn't up to date so the
shell command to create it is executed again.

When this principle is understood, it is just
a matter of looking up the Makefile syntax and
get going :)

For example, here is the Makefile that does my
Elisp:

    http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/emacs-init/Makefile

(It looks more complicated than it is.)

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: building emacs

[Skip Montanaro]

It seems every generation of programmers has
a bunch of people who tries to make a new and
better make, but it is still there while their
projects are long gone.


What strikes me as odd is that one of the reasons people reinvent make is
that it's "too hard" for their programmers to use as-is, while at the same
time expecting those same programmers to master the intricacies of
languages like C++. :-)

Skip Montanaro

Re: building emacs

[Emanuel Berg]

Skip Montanaro wrote:

> What strikes me as odd is that one of the
> reasons people reinvent make is that it's
> "too hard" for their programmers to use
> as-is, while at the same time expecting those
> same programmers to master the intricacies of
> languages like C++. :-)

Compared to C++, and especially if all its
intricacies are to be included, make is
child's play.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: building emacs

[Shakthi Kannan]

Hi,

--- Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
| You understood right. I'm the one who did not
| understand what make was doing.
\--

I had made a simple presentation on GNU Make that you might find useful:

  http://shakthimaan.com/downloads.html#dum-ka-biryani-make-for-each-other

SK

-- 
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com

Re: building emacs

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Thank you very much. make is one of those utilities that most people use without knowing what it's actually doing.

Jean-Christophe 

> On Jun 1, 2017, at 16:19, Shakthi Kannan <shakthimaan@gmail.com> wrote:
> --- Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> | You understood right. I'm the one who did not
> | understand what make was doing.
> \--
> I had made a simple presentation on GNU Make that you might find useful:
>  http://shakthimaan.com/downloads.html#dum-ka-biryani-make-for-each-other

Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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Hi,

I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux
(Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.

So, I tried to generate via autoconf, but I got the following error:

configure.ac:54: error: possibly undefined macro: AS_ECHO
      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
      See the Autoconf documentation.
configure.ac:1695: error: possibly undefined macro: m4_default

Am I missing something?

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Re: Building Emacs

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jan 18, 2020, at 12:23, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux (Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.
> 
> So, I tried to generate via autoconf, but I got the following error:
> 
> configure.ac:54: error: possibly undefined macro: AS_ECHO
>       If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
>       See the Autoconf documentation.
> configure.ac:1695: error: possibly undefined macro: m4_default
> 
> Am I missing something?


Have you tried ./configure ?


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune

Re: Building Emacs

[Noam Postavsky]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 22:24, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux (Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.
>
> So, I tried to generate via autoconf

Try ./autogen.sh instead, as described in INSTALL.REPO.

Re: Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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As I said there is no configure script.

On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 12:36 AM Jean-Christophe Helary <
jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jan 18, 2020, at 12:23, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux
> (Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.
> >
> > So, I tried to generate via autoconf, but I got the following error:
> >
> > configure.ac:54: error: possibly undefined macro: AS_ECHO
> >       If this token and others are legitimate, please use
> m4_pattern_allow.
> >       See the Autoconf documentation.
> > configure.ac:1695: error: possibly undefined macro: m4_default
> >
> > Am I missing something?
>
>
> Have you tried ./configure ?
>
>
> Jean-Christophe Helary
> -----------------------------------------------
> http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune
>
>
>
>

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Re: Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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Ok, using ./autogen.sh the ./configure was generated, I didn't notice
INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.

BTW, sorry my ignorance, but why are there 2 files about installation?

Thanks


On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 12:37 AM Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 22:24, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux
> (Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.
> >
> > So, I tried to generate via autoconf
>
> Try ./autogen.sh instead, as described in INSTALL.REPO.
>

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Re: Building Emacs

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jan 18, 2020, at 12:42, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ok, using ./autogen.sh the ./configure was generated,

Sorry for that, I misunderstood your original message.

> I didn't notice INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
> 
> BTW, sorry my ignorance, but why are there 2 files about installation?

The first one looks like it talks about installing from the git repo, the other one probably from a source package in your distribution ?

But it's confusing and they probably should be merged.

> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 12:37 AM Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 22:24, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux (Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.
> >
> > So, I tried to generate via autoconf
> 
> Try ./autogen.sh instead, as described in INSTALL.REPO.

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune

Re: Building Emacs

[Noam Postavsky]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 22:42, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, using ./autogen.sh the ./configure was generated, I didn't notice INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
>
> BTW, sorry my ignorance, but why are there 2 files about installation?

INSTALL is for installation from a release tarball (which includes
./configure pre-generated), INSTALL.REPO has extra info about
installation from the git repository.

Re: Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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Thanks for all explanation.

Best regards

On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 12:51 AM Jean-Christophe Helary <
jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jan 18, 2020, at 12:42, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Ok, using ./autogen.sh the ./configure was generated,
>
> Sorry for that, I misunderstood your original message.
>
> > I didn't notice INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
> >
> > BTW, sorry my ignorance, but why are there 2 files about installation?
>
> The first one looks like it talks about installing from the git repo, the
> other one probably from a source package in your distribution ?
>
> But it's confusing and they probably should be merged.
>
> > On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 12:37 AM Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 22:24, Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > I've just cloned Emacs from git ant tried to build Emacs on GNU Linux
> (Debian 9), but the configure script is missing.
> > >
> > > So, I tried to generate via autoconf
> >
> > Try ./autogen.sh instead, as described in INSTALL.REPO.
>
> Jean-Christophe Helary
> -----------------------------------------------
> http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune
>
>
>
>

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Re: Building Emacs

[Eric Brown]

Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com> writes:

> Ok, using ./autogen.sh the ./configure was generated, I didn't notice
> INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
>
> BTW, sorry my ignorance, but why are there 2 files about installation?
>
> Thanks
>

One is for install from a release (e.g. 26.3), and the other is for
install from git repo.   There are different instructions, such as `make
bootstrap' when building from the git repo.

Re: Building Emacs

[Paul Eggert]

On 1/17/20 7:42 PM, Vinicius Latorre wrote:
> I didn't notice
> INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.

The first paragraph of INSTALL says, "For information about building from a 
repository checkout (rather than a release), also read the file INSTALL.REPO."

Re: Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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Indeed.

From time to time, I always download Emacs sources and build Emacs from
scratch, so I  followed a script that was based on INSTALL file from some
years ago when INSTALL.REPO didn't exist.


On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 2:41 AM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 1/17/20 7:42 PM, Vinicius Latorre wrote:
> > I didn't notice
> > INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
>
> The first paragraph of INSTALL says, "For information about building from
> a
> repository checkout (rather than a release), also read the file
> INSTALL.REPO."
>

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Re: Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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BTW, I've just built Emacs, but it is crashing.

On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 8:53 PM Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Indeed.
>
> From time to time, I always download Emacs sources and build Emacs from
> scratch, so I  followed a script that was based on INSTALL file from some
> years ago when INSTALL.REPO didn't exist.
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 2:41 AM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>
>> On 1/17/20 7:42 PM, Vinicius Latorre wrote:
>> > I didn't notice
>> > INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
>>
>> The first paragraph of INSTALL says, "For information about building from
>> a
>> repository checkout (rather than a release), also read the file
>> INSTALL.REPO."
>>
>

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Re: Building Emacs

[Vinicius Latorre]

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It crashes when started:

$ emacs

But do not crash when:

$ emacs -q
M-x load-file
~/.emacs



On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 8:56 PM Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
wrote:

> BTW, I've just built Emacs, but it is crashing.
>
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 8:53 PM Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Indeed.
>>
>> From time to time, I always download Emacs sources and build Emacs from
>> scratch, so I  followed a script that was based on INSTALL file from some
>> years ago when INSTALL.REPO didn't exist.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 2:41 AM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/17/20 7:42 PM, Vinicius Latorre wrote:
>>> > I didn't notice
>>> > INSTALL.REPO, only the INSTALL.
>>>
>>> The first paragraph of INSTALL says, "For information about building
>>> from a
>>> repository checkout (rather than a release), also read the file
>>> INSTALL.REPO."
>>>
>>

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Re: Building Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Vinicius Latorre <viniciusjl.gnu@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2020 21:17:50 -0300
> Cc: Emacs Development <Emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> It crashes when started:
> 
> $ emacs
> 
> But do not crash when:
> 
> $ emacs -q
> M-x load-file
> ~/.emacs

Please run that under a debugger, produce a backtrace when it crashes,
and use report-emacs-bug to report the details.

Thanks.