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1.1 root 1: This file describes the standard distribution for the emacs editor.
2: The file contains instructions for compiling, a list of associated
3: software and files, and additional information for people with
4: special problems, like porting to odd machine types or using odd
5: operating systems.
6:
7: Anyone who is trying to maintain a copy of EMACS should send his
8: name, address, machine name, and login name to me:
9:
10: Warren Montgomery
11: IH 6C-501
12:
13: (ihesa!warren or ihnss!warren)
14:
15: I will try to distribute news of interest about new versions or
16: features to anyone who is maintaining a copy
17:
18: COMPILATION AND INSTALLATION:
19:
20: The first step is to move all of the files into the directory that
21: you intend to keep the source in. Do this now if you haven't.
22:
23: The first line of the makefile describes any installation dependent
24: parameters needed to compile emacs. You will need to set the type
25: of system that you are compiling for now. You may want to set
26: other parameter as well, as described later in the text, but you
27: should be able to compile with just this option set.
28:
29: -Dux3: Set this option if you are compiling for any AT&T Unix
30: system released after 1980. (USG 3.0 or greater, system
31: III or greater, or version 7). If you have an older version
32: (version 6, PWB unix, USG 2.0 or 1.2), omit this option.
33:
34: -Dbsd: Set this when compiling for Berkeley unix (4.X bsd).
35: Depending on which version you compile for, you may get an
36: error in not being able to find one of the include files.
37: If you do, just change the pathname of the include file to
38: wherever it lives on your system and recompile. -Dbsd
39: should set it up for any Berkeley system of recent release).
40:
41: As distributed, emacs assumes 4.2BSD, with the select and
42: cbreak mechanisms appropriate to 4.2. If your system does
43: not have these, change the defines near the front of
44: emacs_io.c that set up SELECT, FLIM, and CBRAKE.
45:
46: The primary effect of these two options is to specify what kind of
47: terminal I/O control mechanism to use. If it is not set
48: correctly, emacs may not respond immediately to typed
49: characters (it may wait for 16 characters to be typed before
50: responding).
51:
52: -Du370 and -Duts: If you are compiling for unix/370 or amdahl uts,
53: set one of these, which affect the terminal initialization
54: code and some buffer size limits.
55:
56: -DTERMCAP or -DTERMINFO: If you have a termcap or terminfo system
57: installed, emacs can be compiled to use it. You must add
58: the appropriate library to the makefile entry for "xemacs"
59: before compiling. If neither of these options are set,
60: emacs will compile for it's own terminal support.
61:
62: -DPORTEXT: Set this flag when compiling with a compiler that does
63: not allocate external variables in the order in which they
64: are designed. This flag is set automatically when compiling
65: for uts or unix/370, but may need to be set manually if
66: needed on other machines
67:
68: To make a copy of emacs, just type make. The makefile will make
69: emacs, putting the result in a file called xemacs. EMACS requires
70: several files while running for its error messages, help
71: explanations, and statistics. These are kept in a directory known
72: as the emacs library. By default, this is the
73: directory in which emacs was made. You should make xemacs at least
74: once this way to test it. After you are satisfied with it, you can
75: cause the new versions of emacs, dired, and ecomp to be installed by
76: editing the makefile. Change the definitions of BINDIR and LIBDIR
77: to specify where you want the executable files to be put and where
78: you want the emacs library files to be put and type "make install".
79: This will cause some of the files to be recompiled in order to
80: accommodate the change in the library location, and will cause all of
81: the resulting objects to be moved to BINDIR and the support files
82: installed in LIBDIR. The pathname of LIBDIR is kept in the file
83: "terminals.x".
84:
85: TROUBLESHOOTING:
86:
87: If emacs won't make or doesn't behave as you think it should, there
88: is a primitive "expert system" that diagnoses common problems
89: included in this distribution. This system will ask you questions
90: about your installation of emacs and give suggestions on what you
91: can do to correct the problem. To use it, first make "hyde"
92: (HYpothesis Driven Expert). (If the make file won't run, just run
93: cc -o hyde hyde.c.) Once you have hyde built, you use it by
94: invoking "hyde kbase". Hyde will ask questions about your
95: installation. In general, it will present a series of statements,
96: each with numbers, and you respond by indicating all of the numbers
97: that apply to your situation.
98:
99: Hyde is a crude tool, capable only of diagnosing the common problems
100: that I have anticipated (or debugged for others) and put in it's
101: knowledge base. It may, however, save a lot of time in pointing up
102: things that you may have overlooked.
103:
104: OTHER FILES AND UTILITIES:
105:
106: EMACS can keep statistics on how it is being used and write these to a
107: file called s<version> (where <version> is the version number) in
108: the emacs library. If you want statistics, create such a file (such
109: as s4.7) in the emacs library give read and write access to
110: everybody. EMACS will produce one line of numbers for each
111: invocation, which can be processed with stat_proc.
112:
113: In addition to building xemacs, the makefile will build "ecomp"
114: which is the emacs macro compiler. It can be used to compile EML
115: programs into macros for emacs, and should be placed wherever you put
116: the emacs binary. Ecomp depends on the file "emacs_defs" to define
117: the macro language. This file should be kept in the emacs library.
118: (All of this is done automatically by making "install")
119:
120: The utility programs stat_proc.c and see_it.c have been sent along
121: with the EMACS sources. Both simply require compilation. stat_proc
122: processes the statistics file. Invoked with the name of the file to
123: crunch, it produces a summary, and a list of users and the number of
124: times each invoked EMACS. Invoked with a user name as the second
125: parameter, statistics for that user alone are given. If a - is
126: given as the second parameter, one summary is produced for each user.
127:
128: see_it works like cat, but translates non-ascii and control
129: characters into multi-character sequences, like EMACS. Thus the
130: character 201(octal) in the input would produce M-^A in the output.
131: Normally, all control characters except newline are translated. If
132: the -t option is given, tabs will also pass untranslated.
133:
134: Emacs_vt.c is a collection of screen manipulation routines based on
135: emacs. The makefile entry for emacs_vt.o will compile it, and the
136: mm source file emacs_vt.mm gives instructions for its use.
137:
138: Xusend.c is a write-around for a mis-feature of the usend file
139: sending command. It segments a list of files to avoid over running
140: the byte count limit of usend. Use should be self-explanatory.
141:
142: The cpio archive files MACROS and MACRO_SOURCE contain a collection
143: of sample macros that do various things. Macros for which source
144: code exists are distributed in MACRO_SOURCE. object code for all
145: macros is in MACROS. These will be automatically extracted into a
146: macros directory when you run the makefile. Most contain some
147: limited documentation in addition to that available from the help
148: command help. The file CATALOG in the macro library summarizes what
149: is available.
150:
151: The cpio archive file TERMINALS contains the terminal support
152: description files. When you first make emacs, a directory
153: "terminals" will be created and the terminal descriptions will be
154: loaded into it. You may wish to change some of the entries, or add
155: your own, depending on the terminals used on your machine and the
156: naming conventions for terminals.
157:
158: The file term_support contains a description of the terminal
159: description files, and instructions for adding support for a new terminal.
160:
161: The file hyde.c is a crude expert system inference engine used for
162: the troubleshooter. The kbase is it's knowledge base which
163: describes the specific problems in emacs.
164:
165: SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR SPECIAL SITUATIONS:
166:
167: PORTABILITY:
168:
169: EMACS should be portable to a different machine with relatively
170: little effort. Parts of it depend on a Unix environment, and parts
171: have been optimized to allow it to work in a 64K byte address space,
172: but most code is quite portable. Known points of
173: machine dependence are:
174:
175: The makefile unpacks several archives. These are in ascii
176: (-c) cpio format and should be portable to any unix system
177: having cpio.
178:
179: Several functions taking variable arguments depend on the
180: PDP-11 argument passing convention of storing the arguments
181: to a function consecutively on the stack.
182:
183: EMACS allocates storage above the end of its data area (the
184: symbol _end) by calling sbrk() directly to allocate more
185: space there. You cannot add code to emacs that calls on
186: malloc() or other dynamic storage allocators that call brk
187: or sbrk without modifying emacs.
188:
189: The normal terminal support code depends on types
190: (int) and (char *) occupying the same physical
191: space, and on external symbols being allocated consecutive
192: storage locations in the order in which they are declared.
193: This is true of most implementations of UNIX. Setting the
194: "PORTEXT" flag will eliminate this dependency with some loss
195: of speed on start-up and some expansion of the code.
196:
197: You may get some type clash warnings from some versions of the
198: C compiler. As long as they are all warnings, there
199: is no problem.
200:
201: SYSTEM INFORMATION:
202:
203: EMACS consumes lots of disk space for holding the buffer files and
204: the text in the kill stack. Currently, this is allocated in /tmp.
205: If space is scarce there, you can change the pathnames of the
206: temporary files by changing the definition of BTEMPATH in
207: emacs_buf.h, or by setting -DBTEMPATH=\"/wherever/tmp\" in the
208: VFLAGS line of the makefile.
209:
210: If your system has the termcap database installed, you
211: can use it instead of the internal
212: terminal support. You must set "-DTERMCAP" in the VFLAGS parameter,
213: and modify the makefile entry for xemacs so that the final load is
214: done with the library containing the termcap access routines. I do
215: not guarantee that every termcap supported terminal will work
216: optimally, since some of the parameters are not the same, however
217: most if not all should work acceptably.
218:
219: If you have the terminfo system, you can compile emacs to use it with
220: "-DTERMINFO". The makefile must be modified to include "-lcurses"
221: in the compilation entry for xemacs. Here are a couple of notes
222: about the terminfo/curses version:
223:
224: 1) If you have a version of the curses package compiled for a
225: single terminal (-DSINGLE), use it, as emacs needs only one
226: terminal and this compiles somewhat more compact and
227: efficient code.
228:
229: 2) In order to avoid dynamic memory allocation, emacs fiddles
230: with the cur_term structure, and is thus dependent on the
231: implementation of curses. If anything in the curses library
232: (or any other library) calls malloc() for dynamic memory
233: allocation, severe errors can result. If you suspect a
234: problem here, check it by looking for malloc in a name list
235: of functions loaded in xemacs.
236:
237: As distributed, emacs will time out input reads approximately every
238: 30 seconds to go and look for newly arrived mail and to update the
239: time display for time mode. The cost of this is that on a system
240: with little memory, it will force the emacs process to stay resident
241: or swap in frequently even if no input is entered. This can be
242: turned off by modifying the statement that sets the VMIN parameter
243: in emacs_io.c to set it to 1. instead of 0.
244:
245: The compilation parameter "MINFILES" controls the use of temporary
246: files. Without this parameter set, emacs keeps the data associated
247: with each buffer in a separate temporary file and keeps all of these
248: files open when running. On a heavily loaded unix system with a lot
249: of emacs users, this may result in overflowing the system "inode" or
250: file tables, which causes open(), pipe(), and other system calls
251: which open files to fail. Setting the parameter -DMINFILES in the
252: definition of VFLAGS causes emacs to only keep one of its temporary
253: files open at a time, thus reducing the use of inodes. Doing this
254: slows down emacs somewhat (for the time required to open and close
255: temporary files every time you switch buffers), and can cause
256: temporary files to be left in /tmp if emacs terminates abnormally.
257: Thus this setting is recommended only if your system has trouble
258: with file or inode table overflows. If you set it, watch for files
259: with names of the form em.buffer_number.process_id accumulating
260: in /tmp (or wherever you put the temporary files).
261:
262: Emacs will compile for most AT&T and Berkeley versions of unix.
263: There are some minor variations in functionality depending on what
264: version you pick.
265:
266: FUNCTION VARIATIONS
267:
268: display of time These update every 30 seconds on AT&T 3.0 or
269: and mail messages more recent, and on Berkeley systems with
270: select() (4.2bsd).
271:
272: flow_lim mode Works on AT&T 3.0 or more recent and
273: Berkeley systems with cbreak mode. On
274: Berkeley systems, this can consume some
275: extra cpu time. It is also more likely that
276: ^S or ^Q typed as commands will be
277: interpreted as flow control. This mode
278: should be used only when absolutely
279: necessary.
280:
281: Handling of BREAK: AT&T 3.0 or more recent and all Berkeley
282: unix with cbreak mode.
283:
284: ^@ (mark) command ^@ is a synonym for mark on AT&T systems,
285: but is not available on Berkeley unix
286: systems. ^@ will behave like break on
287: these.
288:
289: Sub-processes: Work on both AT&T and Berkeley unix. On
290: Berkeley unix, emacs will notice output from
291: the sub-process immediately, while on AT&T
292: systems there will be some delay. On
293: certain unix/370 or Amdahl systems with
294: front processors, there is a bug that
295: prevents timing out reads to the terminal,
296: and on these systems, emacs will not notice
297: output from the sub-process until you stop
298: typing.
299:
300: Suspension of emacs: Suspending emacs with the M-^Z command works
301: fine on Berkeley unix. On system V unix
302: running under "shl", you have to type an
303: extra ^Z to get it to suspend.
304:
305: A version of emacs is available to run on an IBM personal computer.
306: In order to prevent the massive unauthorized proliferation of copies
307: that occurred with the unix version of emacs, distribution is being
308: more carefully controlled. If you would like a copy, contact me by
309: unix mail to ihesa!warren.
310:
311: Running on a shared I&D space pdp-11:
312:
313: Because of growth in features and terminal support, fitting
314: emacs into a 64k address space is getting hard. To run
315: effectively, you will have to remove something. The main
316: effect of the limit is to limit the size of file (number of
317: lines) you can edit. Two bytes of data space are needed for
318: each line. Here are
319: some hints on things that don't matter very much that can be
320: removed without serious degradation.
321:
322: NSCRCOL: Changing NSCRCOL (emacs_disp.h) from 128 to 80
323: saves over 1000 bytes, and has no impact unless you support
324: terminals with more than 80 columns of display.
325:
326: NBLOCK (emacs_gb.h) NBLOCK can be reduced from 16 to 2, saving
327: 512 bytes for each unit of reduction. Reducing it limits
328: the space available for macros, and thus the number of
329: macros that can be loaded. It also increases disk I/O somewhat.
330:
331: NBUF (emacs_buf.h) NBUF determines how many editor buffers
332: you can have. Reducing it saves about 150 bytes for each
333: one you get rid of.
334:
335: Time mode (functions dtime, tzset, localtime asctime, etc.) Getting
336: rid of all of the time mode related stuff will save about
337: 800 bytes. This is a seldom used feature.
338:
339: Statistics (functions statout & stats) These are seldom
340: used, and save about 300 bytes.
341:
342: M-". This command is almost never used, and saves ~300 bytes.
343:
344: insert/delete line and character. With a fast terminal,
345: these don't matter much, and getting rid of the code
346: (functions vadjust, lshift, rshift, and code to invoke them)
347: saves 800 bytes.
348:
349: Regular expressions. These are useful, but large (2000 bytes).
350:
351: Macros, very useful, but take a lot of code.
352:
353: Good luck!
354:
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