Emacs Builds
Nightly binary builds of Emacs for macOS as a self-contained Emacs.app, with native-compilation.
Features
- Self-contained Emacs.app application bundle, with no external dependencies.
- Native-compilation (gccemacs).
- Native JSON parsing via libjansson.
- SVG rendering via librsvg.
- Various image formats are supported via macOS native image APIs.
- Xwidget-webkit support is enabled, allowing access to a embedded WebKit-based
browser with
M-x xwidget-webkit-browse-url. - Native XML parsing via libxml2.
- Dynamic module loading.
- Includes the fix-window-role and system-appearance patches from the excellent emacs-plus project.
- Emacs source is fetched from the emacs-mirror/emacs GitHub repository.
- Build creation is transparent and public through the use of GitHub Actions, allowing anyone to inspect git commit SHAs, full source code, and exact commands used to produce a build.
- Emacs.app is signed with a developer certificate and notarized by Apple.
- Uses build-emacs-for-macos to build the self-contained application bundle.
System Requirements
- Intel-based Mac running macOS 10.15.x or later.
Downloads
See the Releases page to download latest builds.
Nightly builds of Emacs are for the part just fine, but if you don't like living too close to the edge, see issue #7 Known Good Nightly Builds for a list of recent nightly builds which have been actively used by a living being without any issues.
Use Emacs.app as emacs CLI Tool
Builds come with a custom emacs shell script launcher for use from the command
line, located next to emacsclient in Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin.
The custom emacs script makes sure to use the main
Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs executable from the correct path, ensuring it
finds all the relevant dependencies within the Emacs.app bundle, regardless of
if it's exposed via PATH or symlinked from elsewhere.
To use it, simply add Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin to your PATH. For
example, if you place Emacs.app in /Applications:
if [ -d "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin" ]; then
export PATH="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin:$PATH"
alias emacs="emacs -nw" # Always launch "emacs" in terminal mode.
fi
If you want emacs in your terminal to launch a GUI instance of Emacs, don't
use the alias from the above example.
Build Process
Building Emacs is done using the jimeh/build-emacs-for-macos build script, executed within a GitHub Actions workflow. This is why macOS 10.15.x or later is required, as it's the oldest version of macOS available in GitHub Actions.
Full history for all builds is available on GitHub Actions here.
Nightly builds are scheduled for 0:00 UTC every night, based on the latest
commit from the master branch of the emacs-mirror/emacs repository. This
means a nightly build will only be produced if there have been new commits since
the last nightly build.
Application Signing / Trust
As of June 21st, 2021, all builds are fully signed and notarized. The signing
certificate used is: Developer ID Application: Jim Myhrberg (5HX66GF82Z)
To verify the application signature and notarization, you can use spctl:
$ spctl -vvv --assess --type exec /Applications/Emacs.app
/Applications/Emacs.app: accepted
source=Notarized Developer ID
origin=Developer ID Application: Jim Myhrberg (5HX66GF82Z)
All builds also come with a SHA256 checksum file, which itself can be double checked against the SHA256 checksum log output from the packaging step of the GitHub Actions workflow run which produced the build.
Issues / To-Do
Please see Issues for details of things to come, or to report issues.