Install pdf-tools on windows with msys2

setup-pdf-tools-msys2.org

Notes for compiling and setting up pdf-tools using msys2

Steps

1. Open msys2 shell
2. Get pdf-tools

   git clone https://github.com/politza/pdf-tools
   cd pdf-tools
       

3. Update and install dependencies, skipping any you already have

   pacman -Syu
   pacman -S base-devel
   pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain
   pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-zlib
   pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng
   pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-poppler
   pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-imagemagick
       

4. Open mingw64 shell
5. Compile pdf-tools

   make -s
       

6. Open emacs
7. Install

   M-x package-install-file RET pdf-tools-${VERSION}.tar RET
       

8. Activate package

   M-x pdf-tools-install RET
       

9. Test

   M-x pdf-info-check-epdfinfo RET
       

Problems

1. Step 8 failed for me and it took me a while to figure out why. There were two problems to be fixed
   1. epdfinfo.exe was loading a library from git-for-windows and there was an error from this. To fix this I made sure the mingw libraries were ahead of the git-for-windows ones in my path like this

      (setenv "PATH" (concat "C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\bin;" (getenv "PATH")))
              

   2. The default encoding for newly created files was utf-8-dos, which uses line endings that epdfinfo doesn’t like. I originally had

      (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
              

      but needed

      (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)
              

As a little remark: Changing the PATH to have mingw64 at its top can mess with other things, e.g. by overriding the systems default python distribution. This is especially problematic, since on Windows, sadly, Python 3 is also called python.exe, despite the convention to call it python3 on unix systems.

As I couldn't come up with how to produce a static executable (libpoppler denied being compiled that way with the pacman version), I essentially chose to bundle the executable with its dependencies:

• After compilation, go to the pdf-tools/server directory in the mingw64 shell.
• Verify that the executable can be started (run ./epdfinfo).
• Collect the required dlls with
  ldd epdfinfo.exe | grep dll | grep -vi '/c/Windows' | perl -pe 's/.=> (.) (.*/$1/' | xargs -I FILE cp 'FILE' -v .
  which is erring on the side of caution. It will likely copy some of the dlls from the Emacs installation, but this way the executable is independent of future changes to the Emacs installation / differences on other systems.
• Move the .dll and .exe files to some other directory.
• Point M-x customize-variable pdf-info-epdfinfo-program to the executable.

This way a portable Windows executable should be obtained, without the risk of side-effects from changing the path.

Downside: My epdfinfo-directory has 23MB, instead of 1.2MB for the epdfinfo.exe alone.

Some additional steps I had to do, to get the compilation to work:

# For cask: Install python2 in mingw, because global python.exe was python3
pacman -S python

# Make the mingw-shell aware of my python installation.
export PATH="/c/Program Files/Emacs/bin/:$PATH"

# Install cask. Certificate errors can be ignored with (unsafe) -k option.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cask/cask/master/go | python
export PATH="$HOME/.cask/bin:$PATH"