Re: Using undumped Emacs

[Dhruva Krishnamurthy]

>>>>> On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 02:04:28 +0000 (UTC), dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) 
>>>>> said:

dc> In article <7ezmy1bh71.fsf@ada2.unipv.it>,
dc> Thien-Thi Nguyen  <ttn@glug.org> wrote:
>> Greg <greg@nospam.org> writes:
>> 
>>> I do: ./temacs -l loadup
>> 
>> you can try:
>> 
>> TERM=vt100 ; ./temacs -l loadup
>> 
>> this is not optimal but if you are inclined, it makes further debugging
>> easier.  under vms, for example, i always specify "vt100" while running
>> undumped emacs.

dc> What is an "umdumped" emacs?

I am making an attempt to explain one of the most complex part in emacs build,
I request the emacs gurus to correct me if I am wrong.

I am assuming that you have not built emacs from sources.

When you build emacs from source, it first makes a bare emacs binary with out
any lisp code loaded or embedded in it. You might be aware that pure emacs
with no elisp code is dumb in terms of an editor or a useful application.

The next phase in the build it to run this raw or pure or undumped emacs
called temacs (.exe on Win32 platform) by loading the elisp files which are
absolutely necessary using the "-l loadup" option. There is a "loadup.el"
which has all the other lisp code that needs to be loaded to get a
useful/working emacs. When this happens, the running temacs process will load
all the required elisp code.

The final phase is to dump that memory contents of temacs with elisp code
loaded into another executable called "emacs" (.exe on Win32). This new
executable will have all the necessary elisp code in the executable and hence
will be much faster at startup than running "./temacs -loadup". This phase of
dumping the temacs process into an emacs executable is _most_ system
dependent. XEmacs has done some progress in generalizing this concept.

I hope I have conveyed the facts (this is to the best of my knowledge).

-dhruva

-- 
Name : Dhruva Krishnamurthy (dk)
Phone: +91-(0)80-22999190
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