I just installed Emacs 26.1 RC-1 and am using it as my production
Emacs. Well, actually I installed it last night but I wrote this last
night so, “I just installed it” as I’m writing this. It’s astounding
how easy compiling and installing Emacs from source on macOS has
become. At one time it was finicky and a pain but the last several
releases have been really easy, even on macOS.
If you’re a macOS user and want to install the 26.1 release candidate
to try it out, here is the magic spell:
configure --with-ns CFLAGS="-g3 -O2 -I /usr/local/include/libxml2" make make install make install-info sudo cp -R nextstep/Emacs.app/ /Applications/
That’s all there is to it. Perry Metzger says you probably don’t need
the --with-ns in the call to configure but it still works and it’s
easier to keep using it than to experiment. You should probably rename
your current Emacs to Emacs-25.3.app or whatever is appropriate for
your setup before you install the new binary.
So far, the only thing I’ve done with it is write this post but it
does seem to be a bit snappier than the 25.3 version I was using
before. If I have any problems, I can always launch my backed up 25.3
version but everyone I’ve talked to says 26.1 has been rock solid for
some time.
If you can, give it try. That way we’ll have a plenty of eyeballs looking
for any problems before the official release. If I find any glitches,
I’ll let you know in addition to filing a bug report.