(stow.info)GNU Emacs

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12.2 GNU Emacs
==============

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.