Installing Emacs on BSD

Emacs is available among BSD variants including FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and PC-BSD

FreeBSD

Install

Emacs 23

To install the latest stable version of Emacs, with all the latest features, there are two approaches: using a pre built package or building from the ports.

To fetch and install the package run:

# pkg_add -r emacs

Or use the ports:

# cd /usr/ports/editors/emacs

# make install

Emacs 24

To install the latest development version of Emacs, with all the latest features, there are two approaches: using a pre built package or building from the ports.

To fetch and install the package run:

# pkg_add -r emacs-devel

Or use the ports:

# cd /usr/ports/editors/emacs-devel

# make install

Related documentation

Using Emacs as a Development Environment from the official FreeBSD project documentation. Some of the config tweaks are a bit dated and might need updating. But overall it's a good starting point.