Re: Precompiled Emacs

[Johan Andersson]

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
>