PRE-COMPILED BINARIES ===================== If you have downloaded binaries for Gnu Emacs version 22 or 23, you can unpack it to a directory, say ~/vm, and go to step (3) below. However, this build assumes that you are not using any supporting libraries such as BBDB, W3 or W3M. If you are using such libraries, please rebuild VM as indicated below. If you are using XEmacs, you need to do your own build. USING CONFIGURE =============== 0) autoconf: If you get VM from the revision control, the `configure' script is not included. You have to run `autoconf' to create it. If you got VM from a public release, you should skip this step. 1) configure: First you need to decide the various options. --with-emacs the emacs you will use to compile (can be a Unix path) --prefix the prefix for the installation (default /usr/local) --with-other-dirs the directories to use for loading any extra emacs-lisp libraries during compilation The default installation locations are as follows: a) GNU Emacs: lisp files goto ${prefix}/share/emacs/site-lisp, data files go to ${prefix}/share/vm, and doc files go to ${prefix}/share/doc/vm-X.Y.Z, and info files go to ${prefix}/share/info, (overridable with --with-lispdir=..., --with-etcdir=..., --with-docdir=... and --infodir=...). b) XEmacs: lisp files go to ${prefix}/lib/xemacs/site-packages/lisp/vm, data files go to ${prefix}/lib/xemacs/site-packages/etc/vm, doc files go to ${prefix}/lib/vm-X.Y.Z, info files to ${prefix}/lib/xemacs/site-packages/info, (overridable with --with-lispdir=..., --with-etcdir=..., --with-docdir=... and --infodir=...). Run M-x describe-installation in XEmacs for hints on where to install the files for XEmacs. NOTE: VM 8.1.1 and older versions used an option --with-pixmapdir, which is now replaced by --with-etcdir. ATTENTION: Files byte-compiled with GNU Emacs are NOT COMPATIBLE with XEmacs and you may experience strange problems during startup if you do so. Even between different versions of the same Emacs, there can be problems! EXAMPLES: a) GNU Emacs+BBDB users run: ./configure --with-other-dirs=/absolute/path/to/bbdb/lisp b) XEmacs+BBDB users run: ./configure --with-emacs=xemacs --with-other-dirs=/path/to/bbdb/lisp c) GNU Emacs+BBDB+Emacs-w3m users run: ./configure --with-other-dirs="/absolute/path/to/bbdb/lisp;/absolute/path/to/emacs-w3m" d) XEmacs with no additional packages ./configure --with-emacs=xemacs 2) make: Compile everything by running: make You may ignore the byte compiler warnings. However any messages from `make' indicate problems or deficiencies in the installation, such as missing libraries. 3) Installing the files a) To use VM from the built directory You can use VM directly from the directory where you built it, without any further installation. To activate VM, follow these steps: Add the "lisp" and "info" directories in the VM built directory to the Emacs search paths, e.g. if you have built vm in ~/vm, add the following to your ~/.emacs or ~/.xemacs/init.el files. (add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/vm/lisp")) (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list (expand-file-name "~/vm/info")) IMPORTANT: If there are any old VM-related autoloads in your emacs init file, you should remove them. The current version of VM takes care of its own autoloading. GNU Emacs: Load the autoloads by hand by adding (require 'vm-autoloads) to their ~/.emacs. XEmacs: Since XEmacs has a built-in distribution of VM, you have two options. (i) You can delete the built-in package in the XEmacs xemacs-packages directory. Then the new copy of VM in ~/vm/lisp will get loaded. (ii) You can include the following line in your ~/.xemacs/init.el file: (load-library "~/vm/lisp/auto-autoloads") Info files: Add the following lines to the `dir' file in your user-maintained info directory. If you don't have one, you can create a new `dir' file in ~/vm/info. * VM: (vm.info). VM Mail Reader * VM-PCrisis: (vm-pcrisis.info). Personality Crisis package for VM Note that vm-pcrisis is a separate add-on package (not officially a part of VM). b) To use VM from system directories: Run make install This will install VM files in the locations chosen in the `configure' step. You are now ready to use VM. C-h i should start up the Emacs Info system. If you have installed the Info documents properly, you can use the online documentation to teach yourself how to use VM. COMPANION PACKAGES ================== VM uses companion packages for address book maintenance and HTML display. VM will work fine even if the companion packages are unavailable, but the best functionality is obtained with them. * BBDB or "Big Brother Insidious DataBase" is an address book application that runs within Emacs. It is able to watch the email addresses in the headers of your email addresses and record them in the database. Assuming that you have compiled VM with BBDB included in the `lispdir' list, include the following lines in your .emacs to turn on BBDB support: (require 'bbdb) (bbdb-initialize 'vm) * For rendering HTML messages, VM can make use of the following Emacs libraries: - Emacs/W3 - a web browser written by William Perry in Emacs Lisp. It is said to be slow and its current maintenance (in 2010) is weak. - Emacs/W3M - an Emacs interface to the text-mode web browser W3M. For guidance on installing either of these libraries, please check their EmacsWiki pages and their own installation instructions. VM can also make use of the following external text-mode web browsers (as basically converters from html to plain text). - Lynx - A fast text-based web browser that runs under Unix. Developed at the University of Kansas. - W3M - Possibly the best text-based web browser. Written by Akinori Ito and his team, it runs fast and renders pages as true to form as possible in plain text. VM can check the libraries available on your path and pick the best one for HTML rendering, but you can also specify the choice explicitly by including in your .emacs file, e.g., (setq vm-mime-text/html-handler 'emacs-w3m) Other than 'emacs-w3m, you can also use 'w3, 'w3m and 'lynx.