Cannot enable org-roam mode - No EmacSQL SQLite binary avaiable

Question

I've installed org-roam (Windows 10, 26.3 x86_64-w64-mingw32) but when I try to call org-roam... then Emacs show:

Loading d:/MEGAsync/Emacs/config/init.el (source)...done
Could not find C compiler, skipping SQLite build
Org-roam initialization: (error "No EmacSQL SQLite binary available, aborting")
Could not find C compiler, skipping SQLite build
emacsql-sqlite-ensure-binary: No EmacSQL SQLite binary available, aborting

Please help :-)

Answer 1

The error originates from https://github.com/skeeto/emacsql/blob/master/emacsql-sqlite.el which checks whether there's a binary created from a previous compilation, then attempts to build it on your system. You haven't built one yet and don't have a toolchain set up, so it errors out early.

https://github.com/skeeto/emacsql/issues/55#issuecomment-515704368 gives a short introduction into the many possible ways of compiling C programs on Windows. I second the recommendation of setting up a mingw-w64 environment, be it with or without msys2.

Answer 2

I solved this issue by doing the following steps:

1. Install Chocolatey package manager

2. Install emacs, sqlite, mingw and msys2 using chocolatey

choco install emacs sqlite msys2 mingw -y

3. Open your configuration file or your init.el file in your .emacs.d directory and copy paste the following code and save it. For more details, visit org-roam user manual

(use-package org-roam :ensure t)

4. Open emacs to force it to download the org-roam packages

5. Open msys2 and execute the following commands (These steps may not be necessary, however it is recommended based on the MSYS2 Website):

pacman -Syu
pacman -Su
pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain

6. Open msys2 and execute the following command:

pacman -S gcc

7. While still inside msys2, navigate to your downloaded emacs-sqlite package located in your .emacs.d. In my case, it is located here: C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\elpa\emacsql-sqlite-20190727.1710\sqlite. Therefore, the command was:

cd C:/Users/User/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/emacsql-sqlite-20190727.1710/sqlite

if you're using Spacemacs, then sqlite will be in a different folder like:

C:/Users/User/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/27.2/develop/emacsql-sqlite-20190727.1710

8. In your emacsql-sqlite/sqlite directory, you should have these four files:

• emacsql.c
• Makefile
• sqlite3.c
• sqlite3.h

9. While inside emacsql-sqlite/sqlite directory, execute the following command:

make emacsql-sqlite CC=gcc LDLIBS=

10. Now you should have an additional file called emacsql-sqlite.exe.

11. Lastly, just restart your emacs and you are good to go.

Hope this help anybody in the future.

Answer 3

I solved this issue, and a similar one (org-roam cannot find executable sqlite3) by downloading manually the binary of SQLite for Windows.

Download, unzip, and put the executable at a location known by Windows PATH (or set its location in the PATH variable, in the Environment Variables). Reload Emacs, and it works!