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(stow.info)GNU Emacs

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GNU Emacs
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   Although the Free Software Foundation has many enlightened practices
regarding Makefiles and software installation (see Note: Other FSF
software), Emacs, its flagship program, doesn't quite follow the
rules.  In particular, most GNU software allows you to write:

     make
     make install prefix=/usr/local/stow/PACKAGE

If you try this with Emacs, then the new value for `prefix' in the
`make install' step will cause some files to get recompiled with the
new value of `prefix' wired into them.  In Emacs 19.23 and later,(1)
the way to work around this problem is:

     make
     make install-arch-dep install-arch-indep prefix=/usr/local/stow/emacs

   In 19.22 and some prior versions of Emacs, the workaround was:

     make
     make do-install prefix=/usr/local/stow/emacs

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) As I write this, the current version of Emacs is 19.31.