Compiling Emacs 29.2 on mac OS

Emacs 29.2 has just been released, and it's also been a breeze to install on my machine. Here's what I did, in case it helps anyone else:

Getting the release

cd ~/Downloads # or any folder of your choice
curl -L -O https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-29.2.tar.xz
tar xf emacs-29.2.tar.xz && cd emacs-29.2

Configuring

I use a local folder as my $DEV_PREFIX (happens to be /build/os) but you can just omit the prefix arg if you don't use a custom one.

./configure --prefix=$DEV_PREFIX \
            --with-xwidgets \
            --disable-ns-self-contained \
            --with-json \
            --with-tree-sitter

The other switches are the features I care about:

with-xwidgets: XWidgets allows embedding actual display bits into your Emacs GUI frames (like a graphical web browser) ;
disable-ns-self-contained: I like launching Emacs from the command-line, or using the daemon. I don't want the "all-in-one mac OS app bundle" version ;
with-json: this compiles the much faster, native JSON support (through libjansson IIRC) ;
with-tree-sitter: Tree-sitter is a great new tool that does source parsing better than most things before it. A lot of Emacs modes can already benefit from it.

Compiling & installing

If the ./configure step succeeds, go ahead and run:

gmake -j8 && gmake install

The -j8 says to uses 8 jobs to go faster and generate some much appreciated heat in this freezing cold season.

If you're a mature kind of person you'll probably want to try before you install: run ./src/emacs right after gmake. If you like life on the edge, install straight away.

Getting back to work

If all of this succeeds (you can write if it doesn't work) you should be able to run Emacs with a bare emacs in your favourite terminal. Have fun!