Build Emacs On Windows

On Windows, we can build GNU Emacs with MSYS2 and MinGW-w64.

First, install some necessary packages. The packages include the base developer tools, the compiler toolchain, several image libraries, and XML library, the GnuTLS library, zlib for decompressing text, HarfBuzz for use as the shaping engine, libgccjit for native-compilation support, SQLite3 for accessing SQL databases, and the tree-sitter library used by some major modes. You can select only part of the libraries if you don't need them all.

pacman --noconfirm -S --needed \
    base-devel \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-xpm-nox \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-gmp \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-gnutls \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libtiff \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-giflib \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-librsvg \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libwebp \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-lcms2 \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-jansson \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libxml2 \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-zlib \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-harfbuzz \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libgccjit \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-sqlite3 \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-tree-sitter

Then, use git to clone the repository, we also need autotools to generate the configure script.

pacman --noconfirm -S git autotools
git config --global core.autocrlf false

You now have a complete build environment for Emacs.

mkdir /c/emacs
cd /c/emacs
git clone --depth=1 https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git emacs-master
install_dir=/c/programs/emacs
cd /c/emacs/emacs-master
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=${install_dir} --with-native-compilation=aot --with-tree-sitter --without-dbus --without-pop
NPROC=$(nproc)
make -j${NPROC}
make install

After building and installing, we need to copy necessary DLLs into Emacs's bin directory if we run Emacs outside the mingw64 shell.

cp -v /mingw64/bin/libbrotlicommon.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libbrotlidec.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libbrotlienc.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libbz*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libcairo-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libdatrie-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libdeflate.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libexpat-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libffi-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libfontconfig-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libfreetype-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libfribidi-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgccjit*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgcc_s_seh-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgdk_pixbuf-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgif-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgio-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libglib-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgmodule-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgmp-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgnutls-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgobject-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libgraphite*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libharfbuzz-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libhogweed-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libiconv-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libidn*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libintl-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libisl-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libjbig-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libjpeg-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/liblcms*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libLerc.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/liblzma-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libmpc-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libmpfr-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libnettle-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libp11-kit-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpango-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpangocairo-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpangoft*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpangowin32-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpcre*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpixman-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libpng*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/librsvg*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libsharpyuv-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libsqlite*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libstdc++-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libtasn1-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libthai-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libtiff-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libtree-sitter.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libunistring-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libwebp-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libwebpdemux-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libwinpthread-*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libxml*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libXpm*.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libzstd.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/wasmtime.dll ${install_dir}/bin
cp -v /mingw64/bin/zlib*.dll ${install_dir}/bin

mkdir -p ${install_dir}/lib/gcc
cp -v /mingw64/lib/{crtbegin,crtend,dllcrt2}.o ${install_dir}/lib/gcc
cp -v /mingw64/lib/lib{advapi32,gcc_s,kernel32,mingw32,mingwex,moldname,msvcrt,pthread,shell32,user32}.a ${install_dir}/lib/gcc
cp -v /mingw64/lib/gcc/x86_64-w64-mingw32/14.2.0/libgcc.a ${install_dir}/lib/gcc
cp -v /mingw64/bin/{ld,as}.exe ${install_dir}/lib/gcc
cp -v /mingw64/bin/libzstd.dll ${install_dir}/lib/gcc
cp -v /mingw64/bin/zlib*.dll ${install_dir}/lib/gcc