Using telega in Windows 10

telega is an Emacs package supplying a full Telegram client. The package and idea is not only great, it works almost out-of-the-box. The biggest challenge is to keep up with the correct tdlib version.

Under Linux this can be annoying but is rather easy. Under Windows it is a bit more difficult but nevertheless possible!

Prerequisites

To get everything up and running we will utilize Msys2 which is a wonderful application supplying pacman for Windows. It also includes many GNU utils, a full MinGW environment and plenty of libraries for MinGW. Additionally we use the Emacs version it supplies.

As we will build some stuff by ourselves and MinGW ships 32 Bit and 64 Bit versions of all of its libraries, I will only mention one version. This will be the 64 Bit version. If you are still running a 32 Bit machine, then please replace each occurrence of 64 in the next statements by yourself.

Installing Msys2

This is straight forward. Get it here and follow the instructions described there.

Important: There is a difference in the terminals Msys2 supplies. Therefore use the terminal mentioned in the instructions!

Installing Emacs

Open a Msys2 MinGW 64-bit Terminal. Then enter the following instructions:

pacman -S msys/emacs mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-emacs

This will install the Msys2 and the MinGW64 version of Emacs. The MinGW64 version will be used to actually work with Emacs. The Msys2 version is only needed to build telega.

Installing library dependencies

The following packages are needed to get tdlib up and running:

pacman -S msys/git msys/gcc mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-gperf

Building tdlib

As switching to a specific commit of tdlib might be necessary, I recommend using the git version directly.

Open a Msys2 MinGW 64-bit Terminal:

git clone https://github.com/tdlib/td.git /usr/src/tdlib
cd /usr/src/tdlib
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="C:/msys64/mingw64" ..
make install

The build might fail due a string table overflow (built file getting too big). If so then change the CMake configuration:

cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="C:/msys64/mingw64" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O2" ..
make install

This will disable the possibility to debug tdlib. But since this guide is about getting telega up and running and not developing tdlib, this should be fine.

Installing telega

First we need to get telega. Open a Msys2 MinGW 64-bit Terminal. Then enter

emacs

This will result in opening the MinGW version of Emacs. Switch to the *scratch* buffer and enter:

(package-initialize)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
       '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/"))
(add-to-list 'package-pinned-packages '(telega . "melpa-stable"))
(package-refresh-contents)
(package-install 'telega)
(package-install 'all-the-icons)
(all-the-icons-install-fonts t) ; Use ~/.emacs.d when prompted for the installation directory!

Afterwards run M-x eval-buffer

To finalize the installation open the file ~/.emacs and place the following in it:

(add-to-list 'package-archives
       '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/"))
(add-to-list 'package-pinned-packages '(telega . "melpa-stable"))
(require 'telega)

This will make sure that telega is ready to be started when Emacs is ready.

Important: Do not run M-x telega yet.

Building the telega server

telega is using an external application which actually communicates with the Telegram server. That application is using the tdlib. But it also use an API not available to MinGW. Luckily that API is available to Msys2. We have even more luck as Msys2 built applications can be called by MinGW built applications.

Therefore we build the telega server using Msys2 but continue using the MinGW Emacs. To do that we open a Msys2 MSYS Terminal:

cd ~/.emacs.d/elpa/telega-<the_installed_version>/
LIBS_PREFIX=/mingw64 make install

Starting telega

Done! telega can now safely be started. Open a Msys2 MinGW 64-bit Terminal. Then enter

emacs

Now run M-x telega, enter your phone number and enjoy chatting on Telegram using Emacs!