The easiest way to install gnuplot-mode in a recent Emacs is to use the Emacs package system with the MELPA repository, or the el-get package (described in README.org). Either method will install the most recent gnuplot-mode from the Github repository. If you want to install gnuplot-mode yourself from a cloned repository, read on.

Gnuplot-mode has been included with Gnuplot since the 3.7 distribution. The installation instructions for the free-standing distribution have been modified to be consistent with that.

1. Type ./configure.

   If configure doesn’t work for you, you can use Makefile.dst instead: see Installing without configure or make below.

   You can specify the Emacs executable to use for byte-compiling by using the EMACS environment variable: for example ./configure EMACS=xemacs to use XEmacs. On Mac OS X, if your Emacs application is located at /Applications/Emacs.app, you should do ./configure EMACS=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

   You can also specify the --with-lispdir= switch to change where make install will put the compiled Lisp files, for example to install them in your .emacs.d directory.

   If you build this from a shell within Emacs itself and get strange issues with load paths or environment variables, build it in a separate terminal

2. Run make. There will be some compilation warnings, but they should be harmless.
3. To make the reference card, run make pdf or make ps.
4. Run make install, or manually move the lisp files to the system site_lisp directory if you are installing as root. If you are installing as a normal user, move the .elc files to a place where emacs can find them, e.g. your personal .emacs.d.

If configure fails for some reason, you can use the included Makefile.dst file by doing make -f Makefile.dst. This makefile doesn’t include an install target, so you’ll have to install the .elc files manually. It does have targets to build the gnuplot-mode reference card (pdf, ps or all).

The “configure; make” sequence may not work on all systems, particularly Win32 systems. The long-winded way of making the .elc and gpelcard.ps files is to edit each of the .el files with emacs and do M-x byte-compile-file. Then latex gpelcard.tex and dvips gpelcard.dvi, or pdflatex gpelcard.tex.

1. Insert the contents of the dotemacs.el file into your .emacs or into the system’s emacs start-up file to enable gnuplot mode.
2. The function gnuplot-info-lookup-symbol looks at the Gnuplot info file that comes with this package or that can be made from the Gnuplot distribution. For that function to work, the file gnuplot.info must be placed somewhere where info can find it, for example /usr/info A line like this in your .emacs allows you to put gnuplot.info any place convenient: (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/file")

The included configure, aclocal.m4 and Makefile.in files were generated from configure.ac and Makefile.am using GNU autotools 2.69. If you want to regenerate them for some reason, do the following:

autoreconf
automake --add-missing

The build- and installation-related files are the following:

Contact gnuplot-mode’s author Bruce Ravel <bruceravel1@gmail.com> or submit an issue on github: http://github.com/bruceravel/gnuplot-mode