Protocol for compiling GNU Emacs version 29 from source code on Mac OS 15 with Tree-Sitter support

I switched to using version 29 about six months ago. This is the current version of Emacs (29.4).

Prerequisites

You must install the tree-sitter C library before compiling Emacs. The emacs-tree-sitter.el package is built into Emacs 29 and 30 but not the C library. I installed the tree-sitter C library with macports and with homebrew. I am not sure which was used when compiling Emacs. I had also installed imagemagick with macports or homebrew a long time ago.

Download Emacs source code

This is what I used on October 13, 2024. Note that in lieu of using git clone, you can download a tar file of the source code for the desired version from the GitHub Repository for GNU Emacs. I had to do the latter because the former gave me version 31 of Emacs, the bleeding edge development version.

Compile protocol

untar the downloaded Emacs source code and move to the unpacked folder.

export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/Cellar/giflib/5.2.2/lib
./autogen.sh
mkdir build
cd build
../configure --with-gnutls=ifavailable --with-cairo --with-xwidgets\
--with-tree-sitter --with-imagemagick --program-suffix=29 \
--prefix=/Users/blaine/bin
# Use 8 processors to speed up make.
make -j8
make install -j8
# Note that the installation did not go quite as planned. 
# I resolved the problem by the next steps.
cd nextstep
cp -R Emacs.app /Applications/Emacs29.4.app
# Make a profile directory. 'O' is for a profile centered on org-mode. 
# 'S' is for using straight as the package manager.
# Note that I do not hide this directory with a preceding dot.
mkdir ~/e29os
# I store this alias in a .bashAppAliases file that I source fromm my .zshrc file.
alias e29os='/Applications/Emacs29.4.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs\
 --init-directory ~/e29os --debug-init'
e29os # Emacs should fire up.

Now check on the configuration features inside Emacs.

C-h v  % enter at the : prompt
system-configuration-features RET

% The following should be returned:
ACL DBUS GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS IMAGEMAGICK JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBXML2 MODULES NOTIFY\
KQUEUE NS PDUMPER PNG RSVG SQLITE3 THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS TREE_SITTER\
 WEBP XIM ZLIB XWIDGETS

After a major upgrade to the operating system, like from Samona to Sequoia, Emacs will have to be recompiled. Remove the old build directory if it is still there. Make a new build directory and carry on as before.

Version	Changes	Date
Version 0.1	Initiated project. Added badges, funding, and update table.	2024 November 5

Sources of funding

• NIH: R01 CA242845
• NIH: R01 AI088011
• NIH: P30 CA225520 (PI: R. Mannel)
• NIH: P20 GM103640 and P30 GM145423 (PI: A. West)