Martin Buchholz <martin(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: This section can be removed. Also wrong is the first question in the Real Real Quickstart FAQ: Q. Do I need to have the packages to compile XEmacs? A. If you want to compile with MULE, you need the mule-base package installed. Otherwise, no package is required before compilation. The correct answer is no. and in this block of text: Unfortunately this requires that a few packages are already in place. You will have to install them by hand as above or use a SUMO tarball. This requirement will hopefully go away in the future. The packages you need are: ... and optionally: mailcrypt - If you have PGP installed and want to verify the signature of the index file. mule-base - Needed if you want to compile XEmacs with MULE. The last line should be removed. I'll send off a patch to xemacs-patches.