Copyright (C) 2001-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.

		      Precompiled Distributions of
			   Emacs for Windows

                           Jan 14, 2021

  This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on
  Windows

IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER
========================

If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of
Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL.  For instance,
if you put the compiled file from this directory on an Internet site,
you must arrange to distribute the source files of the SAME version.

Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we
might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the
old binaries.

Windows Binaries
================

Currently, we provide three different binary packages for Emacs, which
are:

emacs-$VERSION-installer.exe

Contains Emacs with dependencies as an installer
package.  Mostly, this is the best one to install.

emacs-$VERSION.zip

Contains Emacs with dependencies.  This contains the same files as the
installer but as a zip file which some users may prefer.

emacs-$VERSION-no-deps.zip

Contains Emacs without any dependencies.  This may be useful if you
wish to install where the dependencies are already available, or if
you want the small possible Emacs.

In addition, we provide the following files which will not be useful
for most end-users.

emacs-$VERSION-deps.zip

The dependencies.  Unzipping this file on top of
emacs-$VERSION-no-deps.zip should result in the same install as
emacs-$VERSION.zip.

emacs-$VERSION-deps-mingw-w64-src.zip

The source for the dependencies.  Source for Emacs itself is available
in the main distribution tarball.  These dependencies were produced
from an updated msys2 at the point of the first pre-test.  It is not
intended that these will be updated after that point.

Source for Emacs itself is found in the directory above.

Emacs binaries are normally built using MSYS2/MINGW64 and include a full
"Ahead of Time" (AOT) build of provided elisp.  Other binaries for a
given version of Emacs, if any, that have been created from atypical
compilation environments or built using alternative (e.g. "noaot")
settings may include architecture (e.g. "i668") and or other "tags"
following the version identifier (for example:
emacs-X.Y.Z-i686-notreesitter-nognutls.zip).

Snapshots
=========

We also distribute "snapshots" of Emacs built at points throughout the
development cycle, for those interested in following this cycle.  They
are not recommended for normal users; however, they are useful for
people who want to report bugs against the current master, to help in
"pretesting" new release versions, and so on.

The files follow the same naming convention, but also include a date
(and sometimes information about their branch) or they may releate to a
sepecific pretest or release candidate for an "uncut" Emacs.  Emacs
sources are distributed along with each dated snapshot.  Sources are
provided for the pretest and release candidate Emacs versions here, as
for release builds, are found in the directory (or directories) above.

Meta
====

You can find a copy this file, along with other programs used to build Emacs as a native windows program using the MSYS2 toolchain, within the emacs source tree, see: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/admin/nt/dist-build

LICENSE
======

This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
