[OS X Emacs] Installing newer version of org-mode

[Roland Whitehead]

Way back in 2009, Stefan Vollmar very kindly gave a recipe for updating org mode with Aquamacs (Thanks, Stefan). Today I found that the Aquamacs install of org mode is 6.33 when the current version is 8.0.3. Unfortunately, Stefan's recipe needed some updating.

So this is what I did (in case someone else is looking to do the same).

I created a directory, let's call it src. Into src I cloned the git repository:

    git clone git://orgmode.org/org-mode.git

In the new directory ~/src/org-mode I created a file "local.mk" (in Aquamacs of course) whose contents were:

    up2::   # default target
    EMACS   = /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs
    prefix  = ~/Library/Application\ Support/Aquamacs\ Emacs

    lispdir = $(prefix)/org
    datadir = $(prefix)/org/data
    infodir = $(prefix)/org/info

And at the bottom of my .emacs file added:

    ;; org mode settings
    (defvar org-sys-directory "~/devel/org-mode/lisp"
       "The directory containing the org distribution.")
    (setq load-path (cons org-sys-directory load-path))

I created three directories in my Library via the terminal

    mkdir -pv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Aquamacs\ Emacs/org/data
    mkdir -pv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Aquamacs\ Emacs/org/info

I then simply ran "make install" in the terminal (eShell actually) from within my ~/src/org-mode directory.

Finally, I had to restart Aquamacs (because I'd edited my .emacs file as, after all these years I still don't know how to re-source .emacs from with emacs….) before loading org-mode with m-x org-reload which told me that 8.03 was now loaded.

The benefit of this is that if I update Aquamacs then I shouldn't have to re-do all this again as it is now all safely in my Library file and, as I have aliased "amacs" in my .profle, I can use these same settings from the terminal if I'm not using Aquamacs (alias amacs='/Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs -nw') by entering 'amacs' rather than the built in 'emacs'.

NB. I take no responsibility for org mode 8.03 not working for you BTW!


Roland Whitehead
-- 
Quru, London