MSI Installer for GNU Emacs
If you use GNU Emacs on Windows you might have noticed that on the official site the only download option for this platform is a ZIP-archive, no installer is provided. It is, of course, a very compatible option and, probably, most of the GNU Emacs users can integrate it with the operating system manually. Nevertheless, I think that there is no need to make it harder than it should be. It would be great if there was an installer.
Considering that I managed to built an installer using open source WiX Toolset for the other project which I help to maintain (Corman Lisp), I decided to build an MSI installer for GNU Emacs as well. It was rather easy to adapt existing code for the new project.
This project is my humble contribution to the GNU Emacs community.
You can find all the sources on GitHub as well as the pre-built installers for the latest release of GNU Emacs. The sources are in the public domain (CC0). The repository also includes the build instructions. The provided installers bundle official, unmodified GNU Emacs binaries for Windows.
The availability of an MSI installer for an application makes it easier to deploy in some environments.
This project addresses not only the GNU Emacs's installation experience. It might be interesting to the developers which are facing the task of building an MSI installer. It seems that it is not easy to stumble upon a complete Windows Installer XML project. If it is the case, you might want to have a look at the Corman Lisp installer project which is very similar yet somewhat more complex.
Please note that I am not a Windows Installer guru, but I do eat my own dog food, so this installer was tested at least by one person before the release.
Enjoy!
Categories: Emacs Update Development
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I'd be happy to integrate an .msi installer into the mainline and distribute these also. By default, it would need to be GPL and copyright assigned to FSF, although CC0 might be usable. I can ask. Would you be interested in adding this to GNU Emacs proper?
I am really glad that you contacted me about this matter. I would be happy to see this project integrated into mainline. I had some vague hopes that at some point it might happen and it was the main reason why I decided to put it into the public domain and distribute it under the terms of CC0 - to make re-licensing easier.
If integrating the MSI installer into GNU Emacs requires changing the license to GPL - it is fine, provided that the original project on GitHub will remain distributed under its current license. I want to keep it available in its current form for the largest possible audience because of the educational reasons (it is rather hard to stumble upon a complete installer built using the WiX toolset). I hope I am clear enough here: the properly integrated into Emacs version of the MSI installer might be distributed under any license which is required.
It should be noted that although I tried to do my best while developing the installer, it is not something that I do professionally. Still, it seems to work just fine.
If I could help you with integrating the MSI installer into GNU Emacs - feel free to contact me any time. I will try to help as much as I can.
I've taken over packaging of the Windows port of Emacs for GNU from Phil, since Emacs 28.
Are you still interested in seeing if we could integrate your MSI installer into GNU Emacs?
If so, can I ask you to contact me by email? corwin AT bru DOT st :)
Thanks for your work on this!