The XEmacs Packages Quick Start Guide ------------------------------------- This text is intended to help you get started installing a new XEmacs and its packages from start. For details see the 'Startup Paths' and 'Packages' sections of the XEmacs info manual. Real Real Quickstart FAQ ------------------------ Q. Do I need to have the packages to compile XEmacs? A. No, XEmacs will build and install just fine without any packages installed. However, only the most basic editing functions will be available with no packages installed, so installing packages is an essential part of making your installed XEmacs _useful_. Q. I really liked the old way that packages were bundled and do not want to mess with packages at all. A. You can grab all the packages at once like you used to with old XEmacs versions, skip to the 'Sumo Tarball' section below. Q. After installing, I want XEmacs to do `foo', but when I invoke it (or click the toolbar button or select the menu item), nothing (or an error) happens, and it used to work. A. See the first FAQ; you may be missing a package that is essential to you. You can either track it down and install it, or install the `Sumo Tarball' (see the second FAQ). A note of caution ----------------- The XEmacs package system is still in its infancy. Please expect a few minor hurdles on the way. Also neither the interface nor the structure is set in stone. The XEmacs maintainers reserve the right to sacrifice backwards compatibility as quirks are worked out over the coming releases. Some Package Theory ------------------- In order to reduce the size and increase the maintainability of XEmacs, the majority of the Elisp packages that came with previous releases have been unbundled. They have been replaced by the package system. Each elisp add-on (or groups of them when they are small) now comes in its own tarball that contains a small search hierarchy. You select just the ones you need. Install them by untarring them into the right place. On startup XEmacs will find them, set up the load path correctly, install autoloads, etc, etc. Package hierarchies ------------------- On Startup XEmacs looks for packages in so called package hierarchies. These can be specified by the 'package-path' parameter to the 'configure' script. However by default there are three system wide hierarchies. $prefix/lib/xemacs/site-packages Local and 3rd party packages go here. $prefix/lib/xemacs/mule-packages Only searched by MULE-enabled XEmacsen. $prefix/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages Normal packages go here. Where to get the packages ------------------------- Packages are available from ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/packages and its mirrors. How to install the packages --------------------------- 1. All at once, using the 'Sumo Tarball'. 2. By hand. 3. Automatically, using the package tools from XEmacs. The Sumo Tarball ---------------- Those with little time, cheap connections and plenty of disk space can install all the packages at once using the sumo tarballs. Download the file xemacs-sumo.tar.gz For an XEmacs compiled with Mule you also need xemacs-mule-sumo.tar.gz N.B. They are called 'Sumo Tarballs' for good reason. They are currently about 15MB and 2.3MB (gzipped) respectively. Install them by cd $prefix/lib/xemacs ; gunzip -c | tar xf - As the Sumo tarballs are not regenerated as often as the individual packages, it is recommended that you use the automatic package tools afterwards to pick up any recent updates. Installing by Hand ------------------ Fetch the packages from the ftp site, CDROM whatever. The filenames have the form name--pkg.tar.gz and are gzipped tar files. For a fresh install it is sufficient to untar the file at the top of the package hierarchy. For example if we are installing the 'xemacs-base' package in version 1.27: mkdir $prefix/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages # if it does not exist yet cd $prefix/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages gunzip -c ...../xemacs-base-1.27-pkg.tar.gz | tar xf - For MULE related packages, it is best to untar in the mule-packages hierarchy, i.e. for the mule-base package, version 1.25 mkdir $prefix/lib/xemacs/mule-packages # if it does not exist yet cd $prefix/lib/xemacs/mule-packages gunzip -c ...../mule-base-1.25-pkg.tar.gz | tar xf - Installing automatically ------------------------ XEmacs comes with some tools to make the periodic updating and installing easier. It will notice if new packages or versions are available and will fetch them from the ftp site. Unfortunately this requires that a few packages are already in place. You will have to install them by hand as above or use a SUMO tarball. This requirement will hopefully go away in the future. The packages you need are: efs - To fetch the files from the ftp site or mirrors. xemacs-base - Needed by efs. and optionally: mailcrypt - If you have PGP installed and want to verify the signature of the index file. mule-base - Needed if you want to use XEmacs with MULE. After installing these by hand, you can start XEmacs. (It is a good idea to use 'xemacs -vanilla' here as your startup files might need things now moved to packages.) - First you need to specify an FTP site to use. Use Options->Manage Packages->Add Download Site or M-x customize-variable RET package-get-remote RET Alternatively, if you already have the packages on a local disk then you can specify this directly using 'M-x pui-add-install-directory'. Please make sure you also have a corresponding copy of the package index there. - Invoke Options->Manage Packages->List & Install or M-x pui-list-packages RET XEmacs will now first try to fetch a new version of the package index from the FTP site. Depending on whether you are using 'mailcrypt/PGP', you will get some question about keys to fetch or whether to use the index without verifying the signature. If the new index was different from the one already on disk, XEmacs will offer you to overwrite the old index. - XEmacs will show you a buffer named "*Packages*" with an overview of available and installed packages, including a short description. In this buffer you can select which packages you want using the mouse or using RET. - When you are finished choosing packages, invoke 'Packages->Install/Remove Select' from the menu or type 'x' to begin installing packages. After Installation ------------------ New packages can only be used by XEmacs after a restart. Note to MULE users ------------------ Unlike all other packages the mule-base package is used at build/dump time. This means that you need this available before compiling XEmacs with MULE. Also it is a good idea to keep packages that are MULE-only separate by putting them in the mule-packages hierarchy. Which Packages to install? -------------------------- This is difficult to say. When in doubt install a package. If you administrate a big site it might be a good idea to just install everything. A good minimal set of packages for XEmacs-latin1 would be xemacs-base, xemacs-devel, c-support, cc-mode, debug, dired, efs, edit-utils, fsf-compat, mail-lib, net-utils, os-utils, prog-modes, text-modes, time Unfortunately the package system currently provides neither dependencies nor conflicts. This will be a future enhancement. The above set includes most packages that are used by others. See also '.../etc/PACKAGES' for further descriptions of the individual packages (currently outdated). Upgrading/Removing Packages --------------------------- As the exact files and their locations contained in a package may change it is recommended to remove a package first before installing a new version. In order to facilitate removal each package contains an pgkinfo/MANIFEST.pkgname file which list all the files belong to the package. M-x package-admin-delete-binary-package RET can be used to remove a package using this file. Note that the interactive package tools included with XEmacs already do this for you. User Package directories ------------------------ In addition to the system wide packages, each user can have his own packages installed in "~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages". If you want to install packages there using the interactive tools, you need to set 'pui-package-install-dest-dir' to "~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages" Site lisp/Site start -------------------- The site-packages hierarchy replaces the old 'site-lisp' directory. XEmacs no longer looks into a 'site-lisp' directly by default. A good place to put 'site-start.el' would be in $prefix/lib/xemacs/site-packages/lisp/ Finding the right packages -------------------------- If you want to find out which package contains the functionality you are looking for, use M-x package-get-package-provider, and give it a symbol that is likely to be in that package. For example, if some code you want to use has a (require 'thingatpt) in it, try doing M-x package-get-package-provider RET thingatpt , which will return something like: (fsf-compat "1.06").