Re: Precompiled Emacs

[Phillip Lord]

Okay, now I understand. This is a good aim, and would be a good thing to
do. You are right about wanting to test between point releases -- in
fact, for testing, this is more valuable than between major releases, I
think.

In a sense, I am not sure that I would be worried about speed of
installation -- as this is largely useful for package developers, and
it's a per emacs release cost (multiplied by the number of machines a
developer has).

However, given that this is for testing, from my own perspective, I
would prefer not to mess around with my main installation; that is, I
want my own version of Emacs and the rest of my system untouched. So,
why not compile Emacs, and then just launch it from the directory in
which it is built? To precompile, simply untar the distribution,
./configure, make, and then retar everything. This should be pretty
platform independent, doesn't require root, and if you put everything in
one place means a simple delete cleans everything up. It also has the
advantage that the Emacs in question is relative clean (i.e. not patched
by any downstream distributor) which is a useful test in itself.

Phil


Johan Andersson <johan.rejeep@gmail.com> writes:

> Sure, sorry if I am unclear.
>
> I have a project called EVM - Emacs Version Manager (
> https://github.com/rejeep/evm). The idea with the project is that it should
> be possible to install and easily switch between different Emacs version.
> The primary (but not only) usage of this package is that Emacs developers
> should be able to test their package against a lot of different versions.
> Emacs-23 and Emacs-24 is not good enough. I just recently noticed that one
> of my packages worked fine in 24.3, but not in 24.1 and 24.2.
>
> EVM in its current state works fine, but you have to compile Emacs from
> scratch. To allow for setting up this kind of testing on for example Travis
> CI, I want to provide pre compiled binaries, because it takes too long time
> to build Emacs from source.
>
> Basically, I want to be able to do this:
>
> for version in emacs-23.4*-bin* emacs-24.1*-bin* emacs-24.2*-bin* emacs-24.3
> *-bin* emacs-git-trunk*-bin*; do
>   evm install $version
>   evm use $version
>   cd /path/to/my/project
>   make test
> done
>
> Hope this makes it a bit more clear of what I'm trying to achieve.
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Phillip Lord
> <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Well, I have both emacs23 and emacs24 installed on my machine. And there
>> is alternatives support. But still this is all black-box guess work.
>> Instead of saying what you do not way to do, can you explain what you
>> are trying to achieve in the first place? So far I have got:
>>
>> 1) You want to install Emacs on different linux distros
>> 2) You want to use a precompiled distribution for speed of installation
>> 3) You want to be able to use different versions
>> 4) You want to have it work on any distribution
>>
>> My own feeling is that 1-3 can be done with a package manager and that
>> 4 can't be done with anything, but that is irrelevant as someone has
>> already done it for almost all distros.
>>
>> If you can describe what you exact use case is, then you would probably
>> get better advice.
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>> Johan Andersson <johan.rejeep@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > I don't want to use a package manager, because they do not support enough
>> > versions and there is usually no way of switching between different
>> > versions.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 12:46 PM, Phillip Lord
>> > <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> But you don't say why!
>> >>
>> >> If you want to build a prebuilt binary which will install in a sane way,
>> >> then building something for the appropriate package management system
>> >> seems the sensible way. Your only stated aim (fast installations,
>> >> multiple versions) is fulfilled with this solution.
>> >>
>> >> But, emacs packages already exist for most distributions. So using one
>> >> of these makes most sense. Unless you want to extend and modify emacs in
>> >> some way; but if you want to do this, then, probably package.el will be
>> >> enough.
>> >>
>> >> Phil
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Johan Andersson <johan.rejeep@gmail.com> writes:
>> >>
>> >> >> You don't say what distribution you are working with.
>> >> >
>> >> > Any, that's the idea.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com
>> >> >wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >>
>> >> >> You don't say what distribution you are working with.  Why not mess
>> >> >> around with the distributed deb-srcs and make a custom .deb out of
>> it.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> As you see below, you can choose one among the many different
>> >> >> alternatives for emacs.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> kjambunathan@debian-6:/usr/bin$ ls -al | grep emacs
>> >> >>    5792 Dec 11  2010 b2m.emacs23
>> >> >>   82760 Dec 11  2010 ctags.emacs23
>> >> >>    3309 Aug  7  2010 dh_installemacsen
>> >> >>   34780 Dec 11  2010 ebrowse.emacs23
>> >> >>      23 Aug 18 15:54 emacs -> /etc/alternatives/emacs
>> >> >>       9 Aug 18 15:54 emacs23 -> emacs23-x
>> >> >> 6583560 Dec 11  2010 emacs23-x
>> >> >>      29 Aug 18 15:54 emacsclient -> /etc/alternatives/emacsclient
>> >> >>   16816 Dec 11  2010 emacsclient.emacs23
>> >> >>   81064 Dec 11  2010 etags.emacs23
>> >> >>    7294 Dec 11  2010 grep-changelog.emacs23
>> >> >>    3983 Dec 11  2010 rcs-checkin.emacs23
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Johan Andersson <johan.rejeep@gmail.com> writes:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > Well, the thing is that I don't want to install it there. I guess
>> it's
>> >> >> not
>> >> >> > possible to compile Emacs, archive it, move to another machine and
>> >> there
>> >> >> > "make install" to the desired prefix?
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > The purpose of this is to allow for fast installations and at the
>> same
>> >> >> time
>> >> >> > allow for multiple Emacs version. So that will not work with
>> >> >> > "/usr/local/emacs".
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > I guess I could do:
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > $ ./configure --prefix /usr/local/emacs-x.y.z --without-all
>> >> --without-x
>> >> >> > $ make bootstrap
>> >> >> > $ tar ...
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > ... move to another system
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > $ make install
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > That would mean a larger tar-file. But I guess I could "make
>> install"
>> >> on
>> >> >> > the compile system and then tar "/usr/local/emacs-x.y.z".
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Still... seems a bit weird that this limitation exists. Maybe
>> there's
>> >> a
>> >> >> > good reason for it?
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 10:43 PM, Kai Großjohann <
>> >> kai.grossjohann@gmx.net
>> >> >> >wrote:
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> Johan Andersson wrote:
>> >> >> >> > I've read the instructions in INSTALL, which are very good. I
>> tried
>> >> >> and
>> >> >> >> did
>> >> >> >> > a build with:
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > $ ./configure --prefix emacs-install --without-all --without-x
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> The assumption is that the argument of --prefix is the fully
>> >> qualified
>> >> >> >> directory name where Emacs is installed.  If you omit --prefix, it
>> >> will
>> >> >> >> use /usr/local.
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> Conventionally, people are expected to use values such as
>> >> >> >> /usr/local/emacs or /opt/emacs or something.
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> Kai
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Phillip Lord,                           Phone: +44 (0) 191 222 7827
>> >> Lecturer in Bioinformatics,             Email:
>> >> phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk
>> >> School of Computing Science,
>> >> http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord
>> >> Room 914 Claremont Tower,               skype: russet_apples
>> >> Newcastle University,                   twitter: phillord
>> >> NE1 7RU
>> >>
>>
>> --
>> Phillip Lord,                           Phone: +44 (0) 191 222 7827
>> Lecturer in Bioinformatics,             Email:
>> phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk
>> School of Computing Science,
>> http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord
>> Room 914 Claremont Tower,               skype: russet_apples
>> Newcastle University,                   twitter: phillord
>> NE1 7RU
>>

-- 
Phillip Lord,                           Phone: +44 (0) 191 222 7827
Lecturer in Bioinformatics,             Email: phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk
School of Computing Science,            
http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord
Room 914 Claremont Tower,               skype: russet_apples
Newcastle University,                   twitter: phillord
NE1 7RU