Building Emacs from source

A reference page for building Emacs from the git source.

git

This is the remote I prefere to use:

$ git remote -v
origin  git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git (fetch)
origin  git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git (push)

In order to build from a clean slate do:

git reset --hard
git clean -xdf

build

Get all the build dependancies. For debian and the likes uncomment the necessary deb-src from /etc/apt/sources.list and run this:

sudo apt build-dep emacs

The process is:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git && cd emacs
./autogen.sh
# Optional build dir
mkdir build && cd build
./configure # or `../configure` if in build dir

# for full native compilation
make NATIVE_FULL_AOT=1 -j$(nproc)

In arch figuring the dependancies is easy for each library, in ubuntu not that much. Both libjansson, libgccjit and libtree-sitter required manual intervation because they are not availiable in apt.

Here is a configure command for emacs 29+

./configure --with-json --with-native-compilation=aot --with-tree-sitter

Regarding configure options I like the following:

--with-json: requires libjansson-dev
--with-native-compilation=aot: reqiures libgccjit-9-dev
--with-tree-sitter: reqiures libtree-sitter-dev

Also some more dependanices:

libsqlite3-dev: for editing sqlite files
libwebp-dev: for viewing webp files

I wonder what enables the native image api..

In the end this is what I strive for:

Configured for 'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu'.

  Where should the build process find the source code?    .
  What compiler should emacs be built with?               gcc -g3 -O2
  Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc?             no
    (The GNU allocators dont work with this system configuration.)
  Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers?    no
  Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation?         no
  What window system should Emacs use?                    x11
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          GTK3
  Where do we find X Windows header files?                Standard dirs
  Where do we find X Windows libraries?                   Standard dirs
  Does Emacs use -lXaw3d?                                 no
  Does Emacs use -lXpm?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -ljpeg?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -ltiff?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use a gif library?                           yes -lgif
  Does Emacs use a png library?                           yes -lpng16 -lz
  Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2?                                yes
  Does Emacs use -lwebp?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lsqlite3?                               yes
  Does Emacs use cairo?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -llcms2?                                 yes
  Does Emacs use imagemagick?                             no
  Does Emacs use native APIs for images?                  no
  Does Emacs support sound?                               yes
  Does Emacs use -lgpm?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -ldbus?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lgconf?                                 no
  Does Emacs use GSettings?                               yes
  Does Emacs use a file notification library?             yes -lglibc (inotify)
  Does Emacs use access control lists?                    yes -lacl
  Does Emacs use -lselinux?                               yes
  Does Emacs use -lgnutls?                                yes
  Does Emacs use -lxml2?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lfreetype?                              yes
  Does Emacs use HarfBuzz?                                yes
  Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt?                              yes
  Does Emacs use -lotf?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -lxft?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -lsystemd?                               yes
  Does Emacs use -ljansson?                               yes
  Does Emacs use -ltree-sitter?                           yes
  Does Emacs use the GMP library?                         yes
  Does Emacs directly use zlib?                           yes
  Does Emacs have dynamic modules support?                yes
  Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars?                     yes
  Does Emacs support Xwidgets?                            no
  Does Emacs have threading support in lisp?              yes
  Does Emacs support the portable dumper?                 yes
  Does Emacs support legacy unexec dumping?               no
  Which dumping strategy does Emacs use?                  pdumper
  Does Emacs have native lisp compiler?                   yes
  Does Emacs use version 2 of the X Input Extension?      yes
  Does Emacs generate a smaller-size Japanese dictionary? no