Next: Problems building Emacs, Up: Compiling and installing Emacs

### 7.1 How do I install Emacs?

This answer is meant for users of Unix and Unix-like systems. Users of other operating systems should see the series of questions beginning with Emacs for MS-DOS, which describe where to get non-Unix source and binaries, and how to install Emacs on those systems.

Most GNU/Linux distributions provide pre-built Emacs packages. If Emacs is not installed already, you can install it by running (as root) a command such as ‘`yum install emacs`’ (Red Hat and derivatives) or ‘`apt-get install emacs`’ (Debian and derivatives).

If you want to compile Emacs yourself, read the file `INSTALL` in the source distribution. In brief:

- First download the Emacs sources. See Current GNU distributions, for a list of ftp sites that make them available. On `ftp.gnu.org`, the main GNU distribution site, sources are available as

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/emacs-VERSION.tar.gz

  (Replace ‘`VERSION`’ with the relevant version number, e.g. ‘`23.1`’.)

- Next uncompress and extract the source files. This requires the `gzip` and `tar` programs, which are standard utilities. If your system does not have them, these can also be downloaded from `ftp.gnu.org`.

  GNU `tar` can uncompress and extract in a single-step:

                tar -zxvf emacs-VERSION.tar.gz

- At this point, the Emacs sources should be sitting in a directory called `emacs-VERSION`. On most common Unix and Unix-like systems, you should be able to compile Emacs with the following commands:

                cd emacs-VERSION
                ./configure         # configure Emacs for your particular system
                make                # use Makefile to build components, then Emacs

  If the `make` completes successfully, the odds are fairly good that the build has gone well. (See Problems building Emacs, if you weren't successful.)

- By default, Emacs is installed in `/usr/local`. To actually install files, become the superuser and type

                make install

  Note that ‘`make install`’ will overwrite `/usr/local/bin/emacs` and any Emacs Info files that might be in `/usr/local/share/info/`.