XEmacs for Darwin / MacOS X

This page is obsolete. Darwin and Mac OS X are supported quite well in recent versions of XEmacs. See Fink for relatively easy installation of XEmacs and other Unix progams.

This is a port of XEmacs to Darwin / Mac OS X running X Windows ( XFree86 or Tenon's Xtools).

news

28 May 2001: New patch for XEmacs 'gamma' version 21.4.3. Thanks to XEmacs developer extraordinare Martin Buchholz for cleaning up the port. The next XEmacs beta release (21.5.2) should have Darwin support built in with no need for a patch.

2 April 2001: New patches for XEmacs beta version 21.2.46, which uses pdump instead of unexdyld. The binary has not been updated.

8 Jan 2001: Added Graham Reed's changes which should fix bootstrapping problems. Added Steve Nygard's unexdyld changes which should fix binary format problems. The binary has not been updated.

downloads

source patch to XEmacs 21.4.3 (2K, updated May 28).
Should build correctly with both Xtools and XFree86. Xtools still has trouble at runtime; XEmacs may be unusable for you on Xtools.

Installation: Follow the XEmacs Installation HOWTO with the following changes:
2. The HOWTO is out of date. Use version 21.4.3 everywhere.
3. Don't let Stuffit Expander unpack the files; it will place them in separate folders which is wrong. Use tar and gunzip instead.
4.5. Install the patch now. Copy the patch into the xemacs-21.4.3 directory, then
`patch -p0 < xemacs-21.4.3-darwin.patch` (that's a zero)
5. Darwin needs no special configuration options. The OS type is automatically recognized and pdump is automatically used.
6. Switch to the root account by typing `sudo tcsh`.
9. You should still be root when you run xemacs to install packages.
10. The HOWTO is out of date. The menu options are in Tools:Packages.

If you use this patch successfully for a week or more, please email me. This patch will be rolled into XEmacs 21.4 if people are using it without problems.

old downloads

source patch to XEmacs 21.2.46 (9 K, updated April 2).
This version uses the new portable dumping capability available in XEmacs 21.2, which makes XEmacs much easier to build and much less likely to crash after OS upgrades. This version also builds successfully with both Xtools and XFree86, though there are still a few runtime problems with Xtools.
1. Download and unpack the XEmacs 21.2.46 source from www.xemacs.org.
2. Download the patch.
3. cd into the XEmacs source directory. Move the patch into this directory.
4. patch -p1 < xemacs-21.2.46-darwin-0402.patch
5. Configure, build and install XEmacs. Be sure to enable pdump when configuring. This may be as simple as ./configure --pdump ; make ; make install
binary (6.7 MB, updated Dec 22). To install, become root and cd / ; tar -xzf xemacs.tar.gz . You may need to chmod -R a+rX /usr/local/lib /usr/local/bin /usr/local/man to get the permissions right. You may need to add /usr/local/bin to your PATH. Installs files into /usr/local/ . This binary may depend on libraries that aren't standard with X Windows; it has not been tested by me. If it works, let me know; if it doesn't, tell me which libraries it complains about.
source patch to XEmacs 21.1.12 (42 K, updated Jan 8).
Note: this does not build properly using Xtools' libraries. Use XFree86 instead.
1. Download and unpack the XEmacs 21.1.12 source from www.xemacs.org.
2. Download the patch.
3. cd into the XEmacs source directory. Move the patch into this directory.
4. patch -p1 < xemacs-21.1.12-darwin-0108.patch
5. Configure, build and install XEmacs as usual (possibly just ./configure;make;make install).
source patch to XEmacs 21.1.12 (old). This patch has known problems with some copies of the Public Beta and with lisp packages installed after compiling.

links

How to get X Windows on Darwin / MacOS X:

XFree86 4.0.2 has been ported to Darwin and MacOS X. X Windows can be run independent of Aqua or in 'rooted' mode alongside Aqua (press a key to switch between Aqua and X desktops). For those on the bleeding edge, there is now a 'rootless' mode (Mac OS and X11 windows appear side-by-side on the same desktop). See XonX for more details.
Tenon's Xtools is a commercial X server for MacOS X. There is a free time-limited demo. Xtools can be run in 'rooted' or 'rootless' mode. The current Xtools release has significant graphical problems with XEmacs, however, and XEmacs is unusable for some people.

Greg Parker gparker-xemacs@sealiesoftware.com
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