 1. Download the latest zip or tgz archive from ESS downloads area (http://ess.r-project.org/index.php?Section=download) and unpack it into a directory where you would like ESS to reside. We will denote this directory as /path/to/ESS/ hereafter.

     Alternatively you can use svn or git to fetch the most recent development version to your local machine with:

          svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/ESS/trunk /path/to/ESS

     or

          git clone https://github.com/emacs-ess/ESS.git /path/to/ESS

 2. Optionally, compile elisp files and build the documentation with:

          cd /path/to/ESS/
          make

     Without this step, info, pdf and html documentation and reference card will not be available.

 3. Optionally, install into your local machine with make install. You might need administrative privileges:

          make install

     The files are installed into /usr/share/emacs directory. For this step to run correctly on Mac OS X, you will need to adjust the PREFIX path in Makeconf. The necessary code and instructions are commented in that file.

 4. If you have performed the make install step from above, just add

          (require 'ess-site)

     to your ~/.emacs file. Otherwise, you should add /path/to/ESS/lisp/ to your emacs load path and then load ESS with the following lines in your ~/.emacs:

          (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/ESS/lisp/")
          (load "ess-site")

 5. Restart your Emacs and check that ESS was loaded from a correct location with M-x ess-version.

Note for Windows and Mac OS X users: The most straightforward way to install Emacs on your machine is by downloading all-in-one (http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/) Emacs binary by Vincent Goulet.

Note for XEmacs users: Due to XEmacs lacking some features that ESS requires, ESS support of XEmacs ends with ESS 12.04-4.  This decision will be re-visited in the future as XEmacs continues to sync with GNU Emacs.