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I'm having a hard time getting Emacs to build under CentOS 7.1 where I don't have admin rights to install dependencies. After downloading Emacs sources I tried ./configure, and I found out that I was missing X libraries.

I grabbed the gtk3-dev libraries from an rpm repository and extracted them with:

rpm2cpio ../gtk3-devel-3.8.8-10.el7.x86_64.rpm | cpio -idv

And then I tried both:

GTK_LIBS=-L$HOME/tmp/gtk3/usr/lib64/ ./configure \
--prefix=$HOME/Downloads/emacs-25.1/build-out --with-x-toolkit=gtk3

and 

./configure --x-includes=$HOME/tmp/gtk3/usr/include/ \ 
--x-libraries=$HOME/tmp/gtk3/usr/lib64 --with-x-toolkit=gtk3

but the configure script through other messages telling me that other gtk3 dependencies where missing, or that it couldn't find everything.

I was wondering if anyone knows where to find a statically build Emacs 25 for centOS x86_64, or how to build Emacs without admin rights in such a way that all dependencies are handled and installed locally?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • I built mine locally in a virtual machine (e.g., Parallels running the identical version of CentOS) and then uploaded the completed/built Emacs to my website (shared server) where I did not have sufficient privileges to build.
    – lawlist
    Nov 10, 2016 at 16:11
  • Thanks for the comment. That's what I'm trying to do now. I've got the same CentOS version running on a VBox machine, but I don' t have much experience setting up all the configs (networking, users, etc) - so that is taking a lot of time.
    – Daniel
    Nov 10, 2016 at 16:14
  • I had never installed CentOS before the same need arose -- it was just for this particular project (i.e., to build Emacs). I think you'll do just fine -- it is just a virtual machine, so no big deal if you make a mistake.
    – lawlist
    Nov 10, 2016 at 16:15
  • Could you try fedpkg? It worked for me on CentOS several times.
    – wvxvw
    Nov 10, 2016 at 17:43

1 Answer 1

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My solution was to create a virtual machine with Centos where I have admin rights, and compile emacs there.

When building, I added a prefix to configure. That way make install put everything within a folder that mimicked the directory tree of the machine where I have no admin rights.

  1. Install Centos on a virtual machine and grab all dependencies.
  2. Get the emacs repository and run autogen.sh
  3. Configure the build with configure -prefix=/home/USERNAME/local/emacs
  4. Build emacs with make install. The installation directory is all we need.
  5. Copy the install directory to the machine where you have no admin rights.
  6. DONE!
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