Important: If you are using a version of Org that is part of the Emacs distribution or an XEmacs package, please skip this section and go directly to Activation.
If you have downloaded Org from the Web, either as a distribution .zip or .tar file, or as a Git archive, you must take the following steps to install it: go into the unpacked Org distribution directory and edit the top section of the file Makefile. You must set the name of the Emacs binary (likely either emacs or xemacs), and the paths to the directories where local Lisp and Info files are kept. If you don't have access to the system-wide directories, you can simply run Org directly from the distribution directory by adding the lisp subdirectory to the Emacs load path. To do this, add the following line to .emacs:
(setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/orgdir/lisp" load-path))
If you plan to use code from the contrib subdirectory, do a similar step for this directory:
(setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/orgdir/contrib/lisp" load-path))
Now byte-compile the Lisp files with the shell command:
make
If you are running Org from the distribution directory, this is all. If you want to install Org into the system directories, use (as administrator)
make install
Installing Info files is system dependent, because of differences in the install-info program. In Debian it copies the info files into the correct directory and modifies the info directory file. In many other systems, the files need to be copied to the correct directory separately, and install-info then only modifies the directory file. Check your system documentation to find out which of the following commands you need:
make install-info
make install-info-debian
Then add the following line to .emacs. It is needed so that Emacs can autoload functions that are located in files not immediately loaded when Org-mode starts.
(require 'org-install)
Do not forget to activate Org as described in the following section.