Minimal emacs24 installation on ubuntu
I need a minimal emacs 24 installation for distribution in a virtual box. When I try to install emacs ...
I know the feeling... When I install emacs-nox it can be over 100 MB. That's not acceptable for some resource constrained devices, like a BeagleBoard or Banana Pro that's only got a few hundred MB of free storage.
You can fetch and unpack the latest emacs with (for recipe completeness):
wget http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gnu/emacs/emacs-24.5.tar.gz
tar xzf emacs-24.5.tar.gz
cd emacs-24.5/
The following is the configuration I used for emacs-24.5. It produced a binary of 25.4 MB:
./configure --with-xml2 --with-zlib --without-x --without-sound --without-xpm \
--without-jpeg --without-tiff --without-gif --without-png --without-rsvg \
--without-imagemagick --without-xft --without-libotf --without-m17n-flt \
--without-xaw3d --without-toolkit-scroll-bars --without-gpm --without-dbus \
--without-gconf --without-gsettings --without-makeinfo \
--without-compress-install
And:
$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/
total 26648
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 4 Jan 8 2015 bin2fex -> fexc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 580105 Jan 19 23:10 ctags
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 251350 Jan 19 23:10 ebrowse
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 10 Jan 19 23:10 emacs -> emacs-24.5
-rwxr-xr-t 1 root staff 25453742 Jan 19 23:10 emacs-24.5
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 260328 Jan 19 23:10 emacsclient
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 578307 Jan 19 23:10 etags
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 4 Jan 8 2015 fex2bin -> fexc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 49726 Jan 8 2015 fexc
...
Building from sources did requires things like a compiler and linker, but I install them anyway through the build-essential package. The only missing dependency was the ncurses package (ncurses-dev).
Even with all the extra GUI stuff removed, you still get nag screens with hyperlinks. But the binary is 1/4 the size, so I call it a win.
$ ./configure ...
Where should the build process find the source code? .
What compiler should emacs be built with? gcc -std=gnu99 -g3 -O2
Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes
(Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.)
Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers? no
Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation? no
What window system should Emacs use? none
What toolkit should Emacs use? none
Where do we find X Windows header files? NONE
Where do we find X Windows libraries? NONE
Does Emacs use -lXaw3d? no
Does Emacs use -lXpm? no
Does Emacs use -ljpeg? no
Does Emacs use -ltiff? no
Does Emacs use a gif library? no
Does Emacs use a png library? no
Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2? no
Does Emacs use imagemagick? no
Does Emacs support sound? no
Does Emacs use -lgpm? no
Does Emacs use -ldbus? no
Does Emacs use -lgconf? no
Does Emacs use GSettings? no
Does Emacs use a file notification library? yes -lglibc (inotify)
Does Emacs use access control lists? no
Does Emacs use -lselinux? no
Does Emacs use -lgnutls? no
Does Emacs use -lxml2? no
Does Emacs use -lfreetype? no
Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt? no
Does Emacs use -lotf? no
Does Emacs use -lxft? no
Does Emacs directly use zlib? no
Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars? no
You need them if you need the functionality they embody; for example, the ghostscript library for Postscript handling is used in Emacs' printing system, and the imagemagick library is heavily involved in Emacs' image support.
That said, if you don't need your Emacs to generate Postscript or display images, &c., then the best way to work around the need for those libraries is to obtain and build the Emacs source, enabling only the capabilities you actually need in order to minimize the number of external libraries Emacs is linked against.
You can obtain the Emacs source from the GNU Project website. Once you've downloaded and unpacked it, the build follows the usual configure <options> && make && make install convention.
Here's the full list of configure options (the output of configure --help) for Emacs 24.3:
`configure' configures emacs 24.3 to adapt to many kinds of systems.
Usage: ./configure [OPTION]... [VAR=VALUE]...
To assign environment variables (e.g., CC, CFLAGS...), specify them as
VAR=VALUE. See below for descriptions of some of the useful variables.
Defaults for the options are specified in brackets.
Configuration:
-h, --help display this help and exit
--help=short display options specific to this package
--help=recursive display the short help of all the included packages
-V, --version display version information and exit
-q, --quiet, --silent do not print `checking ...' messages
--cache-file=FILE cache test results in FILE [disabled]
-C, --config-cache alias for `--cache-file=config.cache'
-n, --no-create do not create output files
--srcdir=DIR find the sources in DIR [configure dir or `..']
Installation directories:
--prefix=PREFIX install architecture-independent files in PREFIX
[/usr/local]
--exec-prefix=EPREFIX install architecture-dependent files in EPREFIX
[PREFIX]
By default, `make install' will install all the files in
`/usr/local/bin', `/usr/local/lib' etc. You can specify
an installation prefix other than `/usr/local' using `--prefix',
for instance `--prefix=$HOME'.
For better control, use the options below.
Fine tuning of the installation directories:
--bindir=DIR user executables [EPREFIX/bin]
--sbindir=DIR system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin]
--libexecdir=DIR program executables [EPREFIX/libexec]
--sysconfdir=DIR read-only single-machine data [PREFIX/etc]
--sharedstatedir=DIR modifiable architecture-independent data [PREFIX/com]
--localstatedir=DIR modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var]
--libdir=DIR object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib]
--includedir=DIR C header files [PREFIX/include]
--oldincludedir=DIR C header files for non-gcc [/usr/include]
--datarootdir=DIR read-only arch.-independent data root [PREFIX/share]
--datadir=DIR read-only architecture-independent data [DATAROOTDIR]
--infodir=DIR info documentation [DATAROOTDIR/info]
--localedir=DIR locale-dependent data [DATAROOTDIR/locale]
--mandir=DIR man documentation [DATAROOTDIR/man]
--docdir=DIR documentation root [DATAROOTDIR/doc/emacs]
--htmldir=DIR html documentation [DOCDIR]
--dvidir=DIR dvi documentation [DOCDIR]
--pdfdir=DIR pdf documentation [DOCDIR]
--psdir=DIR ps documentation [DOCDIR]
Program names:
--program-prefix=PREFIX prepend PREFIX to installed program names
--program-suffix=SUFFIX append SUFFIX to installed program names
--program-transform-name=PROGRAM run sed PROGRAM on installed program names
X features:
--x-includes=DIR X include files are in DIR
--x-libraries=DIR X library files are in DIR
System types:
--build=BUILD configure for building on BUILD [guessed]
--host=HOST cross-compile to build programs to run on HOST [BUILD]
Optional Features:
--disable-option-checking ignore unrecognized --enable/--with options
--disable-FEATURE do not include FEATURE (same as --enable-FEATURE=no)
--enable-FEATURE[=ARG] include FEATURE [ARG=yes]
--disable-ns-self-contained
disable self contained build under NeXTstep
--enable-locallisppath=PATH
directories Emacs should search for lisp files
specific to this site
--enable-checking[=LIST]
enable expensive run-time checks. With LIST, enable
only specific categories of checks. Categories are:
all,yes,no. Flags are: stringbytes, stringoverrun,
stringfreelist, xmallocoverrun, conslist, glyphs
--enable-check-lisp-object-type
enable compile time checks for the Lisp_Object data
type. This is useful for development for catching
certain types of bugs.
--enable-profiling build emacs with low-level, gprof profiling support.
Mainly useful for debugging Emacs itself. May not
work on all platforms. Stops profiler.el working.
--enable-autodepend automatically generate dependencies to .h-files.
Requires GNU Make and Gcc. Enabled if GNU Make and
Gcc is found
--disable-dependency-tracking speeds up one-time build
--enable-dependency-tracking do not reject slow dependency extractors
--disable-largefile omit support for large files
--enable-gcc-warnings turn on lots of GCC warnings/errors. This is
intended for developers, and may generate false
alarms when used with older or non-GNU development
tools.
--enable-link-time-optimization
build emacs with link-time optimization. This is
supported only for GCC since 4.5.0.
Optional Packages:
--with-PACKAGE[=ARG] use PACKAGE [ARG=yes]
--without-PACKAGE do not use PACKAGE (same as --with-PACKAGE=no)
--without-all omit almost all features and build small executable
with minimal dependencies
--without-pop don't support POP mail retrieval with movemail
--with-kerberos support Kerberos-authenticated POP
--with-kerberos5 support Kerberos version 5 authenticated POP
--with-hesiod support Hesiod to get the POP server host
--with-mmdf support MMDF mailboxes
--with-mail-unlink unlink, rather than empty, mail spool after reading
--with-mailhost=HOSTNAME
string giving default POP mail host
--without-sound don't compile with sound support
--with-x-toolkit=KIT use an X toolkit (KIT one of: yes or gtk, gtk2,
gtk3, lucid or athena, motif, no)
--with-wide-int prefer wide Emacs integers (typically 62-bit)
--without-xpm don't compile with XPM image support
--without-jpeg don't compile with JPEG image support
--without-tiff don't compile with TIFF image support
--without-gif don't compile with GIF image support
--without-png don't compile with PNG image support
--without-rsvg don't compile with SVG image support
--without-xml2 don't compile with XML parsing support
--without-imagemagick don't compile with ImageMagick image support
--without-xft don't use XFT for anti aliased fonts
--without-libotf don't use libotf for OpenType font support
--without-m17n-flt don't use m17n-flt for text shaping
--without-toolkit-scroll-bars
don't use Motif or Xaw3d scroll bars
--without-xaw3d don't use Xaw3d
--without-xim don't use X11 XIM
--with-ns use NeXTstep (Cocoa or GNUstep) windowing system
--with-w32 use native MS Windows GUI
--without-gpm don't use -lgpm for mouse support on a GNU/Linux
console
--without-dbus don't compile with D-Bus support
--without-gconf don't compile with GConf support
--without-gsettings don't compile with GSettings support
--without-selinux don't compile with SELinux support
--without-gnutls don't use -lgnutls for SSL/TLS support
--without-makeinfo don't require makeinfo for building manuals
--without-compress-info don't compress the installed Info pages
--with-pkg-config-prog=PATH
path to pkg-config for finding GTK and librsvg
--with-crt-dir=DIR directory containing crtn.o etc. The default is
/usr/lib, or /usr/lib64 on some platforms.
--with-gameuser=USER user for shared game score files
--with-gnustep-conf=PATH
path to GNUstep.conf; default $GNUSTEP_CONFIG_FILE,
or /etc/GNUstep/GNUstep.conf
--with-x use the X Window System
Some influential environment variables:
CC C compiler command
CFLAGS C compiler flags
LDFLAGS linker flags, e.g. -L<lib dir> if you have libraries in a
nonstandard directory <lib dir>
LIBS libraries to pass to the linker, e.g. -l<library>
CPPFLAGS (Objective) C/C++ preprocessor flags, e.g. -I<include dir> if
you have headers in a nonstandard directory <include dir>
CPP C preprocessor
XMKMF Path to xmkmf, Makefile generator for X Window System
Use these variables to override the choices made by `configure' or to help
it to find libraries and programs with nonstandard names/locations.
Report bugs to the package provider.
Options whose names begin with "enable", "disable", "with", and "without" control which functionality is built into the resulting binaries, and should be of primary interest to you here.
Having recently built my own Emacs 24.3, I can attest that the build process is very straightforward; if you're at all familiar with building Linux software from source, you should encounter no difficulty other than perhaps needing to install a library or two, and if you're not familiar with the process, this is a good place to start learning about it.