Following are the steps and packages required to compile Emacs from git on Debian.
I also feel this page might be a misnomer since its not a “snapshot” which is a term normally reserved for a repository which is maintained as “stable” for people to use. It’s about building directly from the head of the git repository.
git clone --depth 1 git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.gitBoth commands will create a directory named emacs and put the source in it.
To install base libraries:
sudo aptitude install build-essential
The following packages are available through apt-get/aptitude and might need to be installed. Check the output from the configure stage described below.
In order to build after installing required dependencies.
./autogen.sh
./configure
make bootstrap
sudo make installTo update the emacs code from the repositories perform the following command line commands:
CVS : cvs upd
GIT : git pull
and then do a make and install as described in the Build section above.
There is also a precompiled emacs-snapshot package available at http://emacs.naquadah.org/. It is rebuilt regularly and can be installed with a package mananger (like aptitude).
I was having problems with installing emacs-snapshot on Debian Wheezy due to unsatisfiable libmagick-dependencies. The problem was solved by apt-pinning; basically taking two missing libraries from Debian unstable repositories. John H. Robinson has written noob-friendly guide to apt-pinning.