Building the Development Version of Emacs on OpenBSD

And now, the continuing stoooory of a quack who’s gone to the dogs, I mean, a recipe for how to build the development version of Emacs as easily as possible under yet another operating system:

This time it’s OpenBSD.

(This recipe is for OpenBSD 6.7, but it should be the same on most modern versions of OpenBSD.)

Building Emacs under GNU/Linux is totally trivial, which isn’t a surprise, since so many Emacs developers use that as their primary OS. Building under OpenBSD has some quirks.

Anyway, first, as root, install the build requirements.

pkg_add gcc git gnutls gmake jansson automake autoconf
pkg_add `pkg_info -f emacs | grep ^@depend | sed 's/^.*://'`

pkg_add will prompt you for what versions of automake/autoconf to install. Just choose the newest ones.

Then, as a non-root user, run this:

git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git
cd emacs
export AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.69
sh autogen.sh
CC=egcc ./configure --without-makeinfo
make -j4
./src/emacs

And now you should see a beautiful Emacs window on your OpenBSD monitor:

FSVO.

By the way, I wondered what the easiest way to run a bunch of VMs on Linux was these days, and I started futzing around with VMWare… which failed.

Then somebody suggested virt-manager, which was just an “apt install virt-manager” away, and that worked without any problems: I just started it, “New virtual machine” and pointed it to the .iso file of OpenBSD 6.6. Easy peasy.

Building the Development Version of Emacs on FreeBSD

Today in our series “How To Build Emacs For Fun And No Profit Whatsoever“, we’ve reached FreeBSD.

Building Emacs here is very straightforward. First, as root, install the compilation dependencies like this:

pkg update -f
pkg install -y autoconf git gmake pkgconf texinfo
pkg install -y `pkg rquery %dn emacs-devel`

Then, as a non-root user, do:

git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git
cd emacs
gmake -j4
./src/emacs

There! Almost as easy as on Debian!

You’re now ready to help fix Emacs bugs on FreeBSD I mean use Emacs:

Have You Ever Seen Something That Is So Ugly That You Think “I Have To Have That”?

Well, I did!

It’s a teapot from Jason Miller Areaware. You may not be surprised to hear that they don’t make these any more. After only three years with a watchlist on Ebay, I finally got one! And it didn’t shatter in the mail!

Isn’t that just uniquely horrible?

It’s a bit less horrifying on the other side… But it’s not just the jokey “print the bird upside down” thing going on here: It’s the shape that’s so absurd. The top two thirds is a traditional English teapot, but then in tapers off into a vase shape.

It’s wrong!

Just magnificently horrifying. I mean hilarious!

He even put his name on it! For reals.

I guess upside down it looks more reasonable.

Anyway: Best buy ever!

Jason Miller roolz.

(I’ve got a bunch of plates and cups from him, too, but they’re more funny than horrifying.)

3×10%

Last summer I went on an Emacs bug spelunking, and set as a goal for me to close (i.e., fix, prod people about, or determine if the bug reports were invalid, etc.) 10% of the open bugs.

I did that twice (which isn’t the same as fixing 20% of the bugs, because the 10% gets smaller each time YAY).

Then I started on the third ten percenter, and… I took a slight break. For half a year. Or more.

(I suspect that Stefan Kangas took some time off that coincided with me, because he contributed heavily to that descent there…)

Anyway, I’m back for a while, and (non-humble-brag) I finally finished the third 10%!

I have a tendency to work hard on a specific thing for a while, and then not at all for a while, which is why I’m glad I’m not really a maintainer for anything any more, but can just drop by with a coding blitz now and then…

And, as ever, more people working on Emacs bugs would be nice. Install the debbugs-gnu package, say `M-x debbugs-gnu’ and find some area you want to work on. It can be fun! I promise! For real!

(More bug stats can be found here.)