i attempted to compile the new version of emacs today. it
only sortof worked.
grabbed the new emacs-21 and leim tarballs, unpacked them
on my mandrake box at work, ran ./configure and
make bootstrap and make install. the
compilation succeeded but there were lots of warnings about
X related things (font libs, etc). i can get the new version
to run but only in console mode; no nice X windows mode. :(
i was particularly disappointed in the quality of the
INSTALL doc that came in the tarball. for a project that's
been around as long as emacs, i'd have figured that it would
at least contain instructions for a basic compile with the
standard options enabled. actually, if you follow the
instructions in INSTALL, you can't even compile emacs on a
basic linux box. it says to do
./configure, make (which will not work),
and make install; no mention at all of make
bootstrap.
actually, i've noticed this kind of problem with the
documentation for a lot of open source projects. i feel like
i have a much better chance of finding an answer to my
problem if my problem is advanced and obscure than if it is
something simple. i can't even count how many times i've
compiled an app or installed it from a tarball only to find
that the executable installed doesn't have a guessable name.
so i've installed a program on my system and now i have no
idea how to run it or get any info on it (man
doesn't work too well if you don't know the name of the
program). luckily, i'm savvy enough to do a quick
find for the newest executable files on my system
or to read through several levels of complex makefiles and
install scripts to figure out what went where, but i can
imagine the frustration of a user who didn't know how to do
this.
so basically, i'm going to try on my projects to always
make sure i include all the documentation that a user needs
to get up and running with the standard options enabled on a
basic system without too much fuss. it doesn't seem like it
should be that hard.