Build Emacs From Source

Most Linux distributions include Emacs in their package repositories. For example, on Ubuntu, you can install it with: sudo apt-get install emacs. However, if you want the latest bleeding-edge features, or if you're interested in customizing your build (e.g., enabling native compilation or Tree-sitter), you'll want to build Emacs from source.

This post walks you through the manual steps and provides a handy bash script to automate the whole process.

Step 1: Install Dependencies

First, update your package lists and install the required development packages:

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y \
    build-essential \
    texinfo \
    libgnutls28-dev \
    libjpeg-dev \
    libpng-dev \
    libtiff5-dev \
    libgif-dev \
    libxpm-dev \
    libncurses-dev \
    libgtk-3-dev \
    libtree-sitter-dev \
    libmagick++-dev \
    gcc-11 \
    g++-11 \
    libgccjit0 \
    libgccjit-11-dev \
    autoconf \
    libjansson4 \
    libjansson-dev \
    mailutils

Step 2: Clone the Emacs Repository

You can clone Emacs from the official Savannah Git repository or its GitHub mirror:

git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git
# or
git clone https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs.git

Step 3: Configure the Build

Navigate to the Emacs directory and run the following commands to prepare the build. You can tweak the options according to your preferences and recompile later if needed:

cd emacs
export /usr/bin/gcc-11 CXX=/usr/bin/g++-11
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-native-compilation --with-modules --with-mailutils --with-tree-sitter --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-compress-install

Step 4: Build and Install

make -j$(nproc) bootstrap
sudo make install

Optional Bash Script

To streamline this process, I wrote a bash script that automates cloning, configuring, and building Emacs. It also handles situations where cloning from the official repo times out (by falling back to GitHub).

Save the following script as emacs-build.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

function clone_and_build()
{
    PRIMARY_URL="https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git"
    SECONDARY_URL="https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs.git"
    echo "Cloning Emacs from primary URL with 60s timeout..."

    if timeout 60 git clone "$PRIMARY_URL"; then
    echo "Cloned from primary URL successfully."
    else
    echo "Cloning from savannah taking too long, trying github mirror"
    if git clone "$SECONDARY_URL"; then
        echo "Cloned from secondary URL successfully."
    else
        echo "Failed to clone from both URLs."
        exit 1
    fi
    fi
}

function build-emacs()
{
    ./autogen.sh
    ./configure --with-native-compilation --with-modules --with-mailutils --with-tree-sitter --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-compress-install
    make -j$(nproc) bootstrap
}

dest="${1:-$PWD}"
if [[ "$dest" == "r" ]]; then

    echo "building emacs..."
    git pull
    build-emacs
else
    echo "Cloning into $dest"
    mkdir -p "$dest"
    cd "$dest"
    clone_and_build
    cd emacs
    build-emacs
fi

Make it executable by chmod +x emacs-build.sh

To clone and build Emacs in a new directory:

./emacs-build.sh ~/dev

To rebuild an existing clone after pulling new changes, run it from inside the repo with:

./emacs-build.sh r

That’s it! You now have a convenient, repeatable way to build Emacs from source — and stay up to date with the latest features.

Lafith Mattara

Step 1: Install Dependencies

Step 2: Clone the Emacs Repository

Step 3: Configure the Build

Step 4: Build and Install

Optional Bash Script