Emacs Builder

The Emacs Builder is a Docker-based tool designed to automate the building of Emacs in Ubuntu systems, providing a comprehensive environment equipped with all necessary configurations and dependencies for advanced features such as native compilation, JSON support, and Tree Sitter integration.

Installation

To use the Emacs Builder, ensure Docker is installed and properly configured on your system. Follow these steps to set up Emacs Builder:

1. Clone this repository to your local machine:

   git clone git@github.com:midsbie/emacs-builder.git
   cd emacs-builder

2. Initialize the submodule

   git submodule update --init

Usage

Before building Emacs, you may want to switch to a different tag or branch to build a specific version. Navigate into the Emacs directory and check out the desired tag or branch:

cd emacs
git checkout <tag_or_branch_name>

For users operating on different OS versions, you may also want to edit the base image in the FROM stanza in the Dockerfile to match your OS version and ensure that the Docker environment is fully compatible with your system, minimizing potential issues when running Emacs.

To build Emacs, execute the following command from the root of the cloned repository:

./build

This script builds the Docker image if necessary, instantiates the container, and automatically starts the compilation process of Emacs. After the build process completes, the script calls sudo make install, which installs the build artifacts under your system's /usr/local directory, making Emacs binaries accessible outside the Docker environment.

Target Environment

The build script allows you to specify the target environment for Emacs. You can export the TARGET_ENV variable with values x or term to force the build to target a specific environment:

• x for GUI environment
• term for terminal environment

If TARGET_ENV is not set, the script attempts to determine the correct environment based on the presence of a GUI.

export TARGET_ENV=x    # For GUI environment
export TARGET_ENV=term # For terminal environment

Then run the build script:

./build

Required Packages for Term Environment Builds

For term environment builds, ensure that the following packages are installed:

• liblcms2-2
• libgccjit0
• libtree-sitter0

You can install these packages with the following command on Ubuntu 24.04:

sudo apt install liblcms2-2 libgccjit0 libtree-sitter0

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. All contributions are greatly appreciated.

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.