This is how to build Emacs from source on macOS (working as of macOS Sonoma 14.2) (sorry Stallman). We want all the latest bells and whistles:
- native compilation of Elisp
- tree-sitter
- libjannson for fast JSON parsing (useful for LSP modes)
Compiling the latest Emacs from HEAD also gives you access to the latest features, like Eglot (language server built-in to Emacs). You also may wish to compile with debug information if you want to hack on Emacs itself.
Install dependencies
brew install \
pkg-config \
texinfo \
libgccjit \
autoconf \
automake \
make \
jansson \
gnutls \
mailutils \
imagemagick \
tree-sitter \
mailutils
or using MacPorts:
sudo port install \
pkg-config \
gcc13 \
libgcc13 \
texinfo \
autoconf \
automake \
jansson \
gnutls \
ImageMagick \
tree-sitter
# Set location of libgccjit in CFLAGS (used later in build)
CFLAGS="-O3 \
-march=native \
-I/opt/local/include/gcc13 \
-L/opt/local/lib/gcc13 \
-Wl,-rpath,/opt/local/lib/gcc13 "
Make sure pkg-config can find the libraries you just installed:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/local/lib/pkgconfig"
Build instructions
Clone source code and build:
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git
cd emacs
./autogen.sh
# Change "--prefix=..." as you wish
./configure \
--prefix=/usr/local \
--with-ns \
--disable-ns-self-contained \
--with-json \
--with-tree-sitter \
--with-native-compilation \
--with-imagemagick \
--with-mailutils \
--without-compress-install \
CFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
gmake -j $(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
sudo gmake install
You may need to change some of the paths (like /opt/local/lib, /opt/local/include) if you have a non-standard directory for MacPorts or Homebrew. If you are having trouble, make sure that these paths point to where $ find / -name 'libgccjit*' .dylib’s show up.
After the build is successful, you can find the Emacs.app in ./nextstep. You may want to copy this to /Applications like a normal Mac App:
cp -r ./nextstep/Emacs.app /Applications
Note that when you use the configure flag --disable-ns-self-contained as above, you also install Lisp files to the system --prefix directory, so you are able to use Emacs in the terminal as well without issues, but only if you use that flag.
Happy Emacsing!