emacs-travis.mk

Install Emacs and its tooling on Travis CI.

emacs-travis.mk is a small Makefile which provides targets to install Emacs stable and emacs-snapshot, Texinfo and Cask on the Docker-based infrastructure of Travis CI. It compiles a minimal Emacs and Texinfo from source and installs them into $HOME/bin.

Usage

Add the following to your .travis.yml:

language: emacs-lisp
# Emacs fails to build in container-based builds on Travis
# See https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/9061
# and https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/22801
sudo: required
dist: trusty
cache:
  - directories:
      # Cache stable Emacs binaries (saves 1min per job)
      - "$HOME/emacs/"
# Allow Emacs snapshot builds to fail and don’t wait for these as they can take
# a looooong time
matrix:
  fast_finish: true
  allow_failures:
    - env: EMACS_VERSION=snapshot
env:
  - EMACS_VERSION=24.3
  - EMACS_VERSION=25.1-rc2
  - EMACS_VERSION=25.3
  - EMACS_VERSION=26.0.91 PRETEST=yes
  - EMACS_VERSION=snapshot
before_install:
  # Configure $PATH: Executables are installed to $HOME/bin
  - export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
  # Download the makefile to emacs-travis.mk
  - wget 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flycheck/emacs-travis/master/emacs-travis.mk'
  # Install Emacs (according to $EMACS_VERSION) and Cask
  - make -f emacs-travis.mk install_emacs
  - make -f emacs-travis.mk install_cask
  # Install Texinfo, if you need to build info manuals for your project
  - make -f emacs-travis.mk install_texinfo
install:
  # Install your dependencies
  - cask install
script:
  # Run your tests
  - cask exec ert-runner

This setup builds and tests your Emacs Lisp project on Emacs 24.3, the second release candidate of 25.1, 25.3, the 26.0.91 pretest, and the current Emacs snapshot from Git.

Note: To use Texinfo you'll need libperl.so. For example in Ubuntu you can install it by using command as follows:

sudo apt-get install libperl-dev

Other ways to run Emacs on CI

Silex/docker-emacs provides Docker images of Emacs for running on CI or interactive use locally. There are also images with Cask and Git.
flycheck/emacs-cask is a collection of Docker images containing a minimal Emacs compiled from source (like this project) and Cask. Unlike Silex/docker-emacs, the Emacs in the image is built with very few options, intended for use in batch mode, not for interactive usage. Also, Silex/docker-emacs provides more versions of Emacs as Docker images.
EVM provides pre-built Emacs binaries you can use for CI. It does not recompile Emacs every job, unlike this project. However, it does not provides binaries for the latest snapshot version of Emacs.

Reference

To install, download the emacs-travis.mk script in your .travis.yml, and run it with make -f as in the example above.

Environment variables (set these in the env: section of your .travis.yml):

$EMACS_VERSION: The Emacs version to install. Supports any released version of GNU Emacs (tested with 24.3 and upwards), release candidates (e.g. 25.1-rc2) or the special value snapshot to clone the latest master from Emacs’ Git. Defaults to the latest stable release of GNU Emacs.
$TEXINFO_VERSION: The Texinfo version to install. Supports any released version of GNU Texinfo (tested with 5.2 and upwards). Defaults to the latest stable release of GNU Texinfo.

Additional environment variables (for special purposes):

$EMACSCONFFLAGS: Flags for ./configure when building Emacs. Defaults to building a minimal Emacs, without almost all features

Targets (for use in before_install):

install_cask: Install Cask
install_emacs: Install GNU Emacs, as per $EMACS_VERSION
install_texinfo: Install GNU Texinfo, as per $TEXINFO_VERSION

Note the OS/version combinations which are not supported within .travis.yml.

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.