Re: Compiling Emacs from source

[Óscar Fuentes]

Henri-Paul Indiogine <hindiogine@gmail.com> writes:

[snip]

> I tried to Google for any instructions on how to compile Emacs, but
> could not find any.

Try reading the file named `INSTALL' on the top directory of Emacs'
source code.

> I am also concerned about additional packages that come with the Ubuntu
> distribution of Emacs.  Would I have to go and find all of them and
> compile them afterward as I now do for org-mode?

You'll need some libraries if you want features like image support,
antialised fonts, etc. You don't need to build those libraries yourself,
just install their respective Ubuntu packages.

> Is it worth it?   Should I stay with version 23?  The version that I was
> able to obtain from the Emacs Bazaar repository is version 24. Anyway, I
> think that just a more recent version of 23 is adventurous enough.

Right now the differences among the upcoming maintenance release version
23.2 and the development version 24 are minimal, you'll hardly notice
them, because they forked just days ago. So for now you gain very little
on terms of new features by switching to the development version.

Unless you intend to contribute to Emacs development or you found a
showstopper bug in version 23 that was fixed on version 24, keep using
the released version.