Emacs and Windows
You can also download and install Emacs 21.3 for the various Windows platforms (Win95, Win98, Win2K, WinXP, and so on). As most Windows machines do not ship with the tools required to build Emacs from scratch, we'll look at downloading and installing prebuilt executables.[7]
Installing Emacs
As with all platforms, you have choices when installing Emacs on Windows. You can install a binary hosted by the FSF (likely to be older, but certainly stable). You can find a more recent binary online (we'll point you to the one we prefer). You could also build Emacs from CVS, but if you're doing that on Windows, chances are you are not reading this book. Windows comes with no default compilers.
Installing the latest binaries: Nqmacs
Our source for the latest binaries is Nqmacs (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nqmacs/). This is simply a build of the latest version of GNU Emacs from CVS sources, not a separate version of Emacs as the name may imply. Windows binaries are posted here on a regular basis, giving Windows users access to the latest version without having to build it themselves.
To install on Windows, simply download the latest binaries, unpack into a new folder using WinZip or Windows own decompression utilities, go to the bin subfolder and double-click on runemacs.exe. By right-clicking on the icon, you can send a copy of the icon to the desktop.
Installing Emacs from the FSF
As we mentioned, the binaries at the FSF are stable but generally older. For example, at ...
Get Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
