Build and install Emacs24 on Debian squeeze

Hacking in Debian is so easy (one of the reasons I switched). Take, for instance, building Emacs. This is such a piece of cake compared to the weird hoops you have to go through to get all the build dependencies on other platforms. It’s something I never tried before, simply because it was too daunting trying to figure out all the packages I need to install. But apt-get has this awesome –build-deps switch…

So then, how to build and install Emacs 24 on Debian squeeze, in 6 easy steps? Since Emacs24 is not yet released, there isn’t a package for it in Debian (which is why I’m building my own). But I figured that the build dependencies would not have changed too much from Emacs23, so I used that, and it worked.

1. Install the build dependencies:

   
      # apt-get build-dep emacs23

   This installs all the compilers, parsers, development libraries and other parts of the GNU toolchain that is needed to build the emacs23 package.

2. Download the source code. I used the GitHub mirror of the official GNU Savana codebase, and downloaded the newest PKzip archive from there. There is probably a newer one now. Purists probably would check-out direct from either Savana or GitHub rather than download a zip archive… I’m not going to hack emacs itself though, so I don’t care.
3. Unzip the archive and generate the configure script (the autogen step is skipped in the INSTALL file by the way, good thing I’ve done my homework):
   

   
      $ unzip emacsmirror-emacs-EMACS_PRETEST_24_9_92-295-g2dccfc4.zip
      $ cd emacsmirror-emacssnapshot
      $ ./autogen.sh
    

4. Follow the INSTALL instructions:

   
      $ ./configure
      $ make
    

5. Test it (Note:- if you watch the build, you'll see that after the C core of emacs is built, emacs itself is used to compile the elisp components, so building also makes a fairly good test of the C parts anyway):

   
      $ src/emacs -Q
     

6. If okay, install it:
   

   
      # make install
     

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