Eu costumava fazer assim:
sudo apt-get install build-essential texinfo libx11-dev libxpm-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libgif-dev libtiff-dev libgtk2.0-dev libncurses-dev
# for gtk3 build replace libgtk2.0-dev with libgtk-3-dev
git clone --depth=1 git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git
./autogen.sh # not needed when installing from tarball
./configure
make bootstrap
sudo make install
Para criar documentos:
make docs
# or build just the format you want:
make info
make dvi
make html
make pdf
Mas agora eu só uso o pacote
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntu-elisp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install emacs-snapshot