I am having a difficult time loading ruby-mode in emacs on my mac.
The .emacs file is located at ~/.emacs I've added several commands to it (many pasted from this site) and none seem to get loaded. Any advise? I"m not sure if the file isn't loading or I have the command syntax wrong.
All I need is the following
4 space indent (auto-intedent would be great as well)
ruby mode loaded for .rb files.
Thanks!
Put the line (warn "Loading .emacs") as the first line of .emacs. When you start emacs does it show you that message in a warning buffer? If so, it at least started loading the file.
If this does nothing, try opening the file in emacs, and running M-x eval-buffer.
Also, at startup, does the Messages buffer indicate any errors in your .emacs? This is the most common reason for a .emacs not to take effect.
This is how emacs finds the .emacs file.
57.6.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File
Normally Emacs uses the environment variable HOME (see HOME) to find .emacs; that's what ‘~’ means in a file name. If .emacs is not found inside ~/ (nor .emacs.el), Emacs looks for ~/.emacs.d/init.el (which, like ~/.emacs.el, can be byte-compiled).
However, if you run Emacs from a shell started by su, Emacs tries to find your own .emacs, not that of the user you are currently pretending to be. The idea is that you should get your own editor customizations even if you are running as the super user.
More precisely, Emacs first determines which user's init file to use. It gets your user name from the environment variables LOGNAME and USER; if neither of those exists, it uses effective user-ID. If that user name matches the real user-ID, then Emacs uses HOME; otherwise, it looks up the home directory corresponding to that user name in the system's data base of users.
From http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Find-Init.html#Find-Init
Related
I am trying to set up a development environment on Windows 10. So far I've installed Vim and Cmder (the full version with Git for Windows).
Playing around, I noticed some strange behavior which I don't understand, but I feel like it is important that I understand.
Case A
I open PowerShell
Locate the folder that contains vim.exe
Run .\vim.exe
Vim pops up and displays the default screen (VIM - Vi IMproved, version 8.1.1, etc.)
In Normal Mode I type :version to check the version number and to see where my _vimrc file is located
Vim gives me the expected output
Case B
I open Cmder and open a new PowerShell tab (I am assuming that that gives me access to the PowerShell instead of the default cmd.exe, but please correct me if I am wrong.)
NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING
If I repeat steps 2-6 exactly as in Case A, I get exactly the same result.
BUT:
If instead of locating the folder that stores vim.exe I just type in vim and hit Enter it opens Vim once again, but this time it has a tab on the bottom that says "unix". See attached images.
Out of curiosity, in Normal Mode I type :version, just like in Case A, but this time I am getting a different date in the version section, a different selection of options, and a different Unix-like path to the vimrc file which in now .vimrc instead of _vimrc.
What gives? My guess is that Git for Windows that came with Cmder is simulating a Unix environment and accessing a different Vim version that was compiled for Unix?
If this is true, then could you help me make sense of this Windows/Unix environment duality? Do I now have two HOME folders, two copies of the vimrc file, and two copies of who knows what else? What is simulating this Unix environment - Cmder?
Thanks!
I don't have experience with Cmder, but I use Git for Windows a lot.
Git for Windows comes with some Unix utilities and uses Cygwin which is Unix emulator for running those. Vim is among them as default text editor for commit messages, etc. So it might be it.
I tried to reproduce this on my machine. but I cannot reproduce what you are seeing. Nonetheless I found the vimrc file for the Vim you are probably using in the second case.
It is in <Cmder-dir>\vendor\git-for-windows\etc\vimrc.
You have two different versions of Vim installed, and depending on the environment you start it from, one or the other gets selected. Git (as a tool that initially was developed on and for Linux) typically brings with it a set of Windows-ports.
You can check what Vim binary is used (respectively) from within Vim via
:echo v:progpath
Whether you live with this duplication or try to consistently use one Vim instance is up to you. It looks like the Vim that accompanies Git has more Unix-centric settings; it might be good to keep that to avoid interoperability issues.
You definitely don't need to clone your whole Vim configuration - as long as you stick to Unix-style (LF) line endings, it can be understood by any Vim. By setting the HOME environment variable (but that may affect other programs!), you can make Vim use the same location. Else, you could give one Vim config location a small .vimrc that just corrects 'runtimepath', and then :sources the "real" vimrc from the other location.
Does anyone know where to put the cdlatex.el script written by C. Dominik to allow swift LaTeX math insertion within an *.org file? CDLatex is a minor mode that can work with Org-mode, at least that's what I gather.
I've followed the instructions given [in this link] but when I type M-x org-cdlatex-mode RET I get "Cannot open load file: no such file or directory, cdlatex" in the Emacs' echo buffer. What does it mean? I've also tried looking for a package named "cdlatex" in the list of packages (M-x list-packages) but there wasn't any. How do I get this minor mode activated in Org?
I'm running Windows 7, Emacs 24.1, Org-mode 8.2.10, AUCTEX 11.88, TexLive 2015. At least another user has this same problem, please check this address.
My emacs working path file is C:\home\.emacs.d\. Do I put the script in C:\home\.emacs.d\elpa\? Inside the ~\.emacs.d\elpa\ I also have yasnippets and auctex directories, among others. Here's a snapshot:
Put the cdlatex.el script in one of the Load paths. To find all the load paths type C-h v RET load-path RET, then pick one and place the script in there. Restart emacs (or the machine if you prefer) and try out the CDLaTeX mode in one of the *.org files by enabling it either through menu or keyboard command:M-x org-cdlatex-mode RET.
Unfortunately for me there's some configuration problem because every time I type backquote or backtick (`), Org doesn't seem to recognize it when in CDLaTeX mode. It says: "Wrong type argument: characterp, 134217782"
When someone says "edit your .plist file" or "your .profile" or ".bash_profile" etc, this just confuses me. I have no idea where these files are, how to create them if I have to do that, etc, and also why there seem to be so many different ones (why? Do they do different things?)
So could someone please explain very patiently to a previous Windows user (wanting desperately to become more familiar with the pleasant if initially somewhat confusing OS X world) how to do this step by step?
I need the variables to be set both for GUI applications and command line applications, and at the moment it's for an ant script that needs the variables, but there will most likely be other needs as well.
Please note that I have Lion too, since many of the answers you get Googling seem to be outdated for Lion...
Also note that I have practically zero experience using the Terminal. I'm willing to learn, but please explain for a novice...
First, one thing to recognize about OS X is that it is built on Unix. This is where the .bash_profile comes in. When you start the Terminal app in OS X you get a bash shell by default. The bash shell comes from Unix and when it loads it runs the .bash_profile script. You can modify this script for your user to change your settings. This file is located at:
~/.bash_profile
Update for Mavericks
OS X Mavericks does not use the environment.plist - at least not for OS X windows applications. You can use the launchd configuration for windowed applications. The .bash_profile is still supported since that is part of the bash shell used in Terminal.
Lion and Mountain Lion Only
OS X windowed applications receive environment variables from the your environment.plist file. This is likely what you mean by the ".plist" file. This file is located at:
~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
If you make a change to your environment.plist file then OS X windows applications, including the Terminal app, will have those environment variables set. Any environment variable you set in your .bash_profile will only affect your bash shells.
Generally I only set variables in my .bash_profile file and don't change the .plist file (or launchd file on Mavericks). Most OS X windowed applications don't need any custom environment. Only when an application actually needs a specific environment variable do I change the environment.plist (or launchd file on Mavericks).
It sounds like what you want is to change the environment.plist file, rather than the .bash_profile.
One last thing, if you look for those files, I think you will not find them. If I recall correctly, they were not on my initial install of Lion.
Edit: Here are some instructions for creating a plist file.
Open Xcode
Select File -> New -> New File...
Under Mac OS X select Resources
Choose a plist file
Follow the rest of the prompts
To edit the file, you can Control-click to get a menu and select Add Row. You then can add a key value pair. For environment variables, the key is the environment variable name and the value is the actual value for that environment variable.
Once the plist file is created you can open it with Xcode to modify it anytime you wish.
Your .profile or .bash_profile are simply files that are present in your "home" folder. If you open a Finder window and click your account name in the Favorites pane, you won't see them. If you open a Terminal window and type ls to list files you still won't see them. However, you can find them by using ls -a in the terminal. Or if you open your favorite text editor (say TextEdit since it comes with OS X) and do File->Open and then press Command+Shift+. and click on your account name (home folder) you will see them as well. If you do not see them, then you can create one in your favorite text editor.
Now, adding environment variables is relatively straightforward and remarkably similar to windows conceptually. In your .profile just add, one per line, the variable name and its value as follows:
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
export JRE_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
etc.
If you are modifying your "PATH" variable, be sure to include the system's default PATH that was already set for you:
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/my/stuff
Now here is the quirky part, you can either open a new Terminal window to have the new variables take effect, or you will need to type .profile or .bash_profile to reload the file and have the contents be applied to your current Terminal's environment.
You can check that your changes took effect using the "set" command in your Terminal. Just type set (or set | more if you prefer a paginated list) and be sure what you added to the file is there.
As for adding environment variables to GUI apps, that is normally not necessary and I'd like to hear more about what you are specifically trying to do to better give you an answer for it.
Here's a bit more information specifically regarding the PATH variable in Lion OS 10.7.x:
If you need to set the PATH globally, the PATH is built by the system in the following order:
Parsing the contents of the file /private/etc/paths, one path per line
Parsing the contents of the folder /private/etc/paths.d. Each file in that folder can contain multiple paths, one path per line. Load order is determined by the file name first, and then the order of the lines in the file.
A setenv PATH statement in /private/etc/launchd.conf, which will append that path to the path already built in #1 and #2 (you must not use $PATH to reference the PATH variable that has been built so far). But, setting the PATH here is completely unnecessary given the other two options, although this is the place where other global environment variables can be set for all users.
These paths and variables are inherited by all users and applications, so they are truly global -- logging out and in will not reset these paths -- they're built for the system and are created before any user is given the opportunity to login, so changes to these require a system restart to take effect.
BTW, a clean install of OS 10.7.x Lion doesn't have an environment.plist that I can find, so it may work but may also be deprecated.
echo $PATH
it prints current path value
Then do vim ~/.bash_profile and write
export PATH=$PATH:/new/path/to/be/added
here you are appending to the old path, so preserves the old path and adds your new path to it
then do
source ~/.bash_profile
this will execute it and add the path
then again check with
echo $PATH
Unfortunately none of these answers solved the specific problem I had.
Here's a simple solution without having to mess with bash. In my case, it was getting gradle to work (for Android Studio).
Btw, These steps relate to OSX (Mountain Lion 10.8.5)
Open up Terminal.
Run the following command:
sudo nano /etc/paths (or sudo vim /etc/paths for vim)
Go to the bottom of the file, and enter the path you wish to add.
Hit control-x to quit.
Enter 'Y' to save the modified buffer.
Open a new terminal window then type:
echo $PATH
You should see the new path appended to the end of the PATH
I got these details from this post:
http://architectryan.com/2012/10/02/add-to-the-path-on-mac-os-x-mountain-lion/#.UkED3rxPp3Q
I hope that can help someone else
Simplified Explanation
This post/question is kind of old, so I will answer a simplified version for OS X Lion users.
By default, OSX Lion does not have any of the following files:
~/.bashrc
~/.bash_profile
~/.profile
At most, if you've done anything in the terminal you might see ~/.bash_history
What It Means
You must create the file to set your default bash commands (commonly in ~/.bashrc). To do this, use any sort of editor, though it's more simple to do it within the terminal:
%> emacs .profile
[from w/in emacs type:] source ~/.bashrc
[from w/in emacs type:] Ctrl + x Ctrl + s (to save the file)
[from w/in emacs type:] Ctrl + x Ctrl + c (to close emacs)
%> emacs .bashrc
[from w/in emacs type/paste all your bash commands, save, and exit]
The next time you quit and reload the terminal, it should load all your bash preferences. For good measure, it's usually a good idea to separate your commands into useful file names. For instance, from within ~/.bashrc, you should have a source ~/.bash_aliases and put all your alias commands in ~/.bash_aliases.
What worked for me is to create a .launchd.conf with the variables I needed:
setenv FOO barbaz
This file is read by launchd at login. You can add a variable 'on the fly' to the running launchd using:
launchctl setenv FOO barbaz`
In fact, .launchd.cond simply contains launchctl commands.
Variables set this way seem to be present in GUI applications properly.
If you happen to be trying to set your LANG or LC_ variables in this way, and you happen to be using iTerm2, make sure you disable the 'Set locale variables automatically' setting under the Terminal tab of the Profile you're using. That seems to override launchd's environment variables, and in my case was setting a broken LC_CTYPE causing issues on remote servers (which got passed the variable).
(The environment.plist still seems to work on my Lion though. You can use the RCenvironment preference pane to maintain the file instead of manually editing it or required Xcode. Still seems to work on Lion, though it's last update is from the Snow Leopard era. Makes it my personally preferred method.)
Setup your PATH environment variable on Mac OS
Open the Terminal program (this is in your Applications/Utilites folder by default).
Run the following command
touch ~/.bash_profile; open ~/.bash_profile
This will open the file in the your default text editor.
For ANDROID SDK as example :
You need to add the path to your Android SDK platform-tools and tools directory. In my example I will use "/Development/android-sdk-macosx" as the directory the SDK is installed in. Add the following line:
export PATH=${PATH}:/Development/android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools:/Development/android-sdk-macosx/tools
Save the file and quit the text editor.
Execute your .bash_profile to update your PATH.
source ~/.bash_profile
Now everytime you open the Terminal program you PATH will included the Android SDK.
Adding Path Variables to OS X Lion
This was pretty straight forward and worked for me, in terminal:
$echo "export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/whatever" >> .bash_profile #replace "/path/to/whatever" with the location of what you want to add to your bash profile, i.e: $ echo "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.0.12/sbin" >> .bash_profile
$. .bash_profile #restart your bash shell
A similar response was here: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/255324-problems-setting-path-variable-lion.html#post1317516
Open Terminal:
vi ~/.bash_profile
Apply changing to system (no need restart computer):
source ~/.bash_profile
(Also work with macOS Sierra 10.12.1)
I had problem with Eclipse (started as GUI, not from script) on Maverics that it did not take custom PATH. I tried all the methods mentioned above to no avail. Finally I found the simplest working answer based on hints from here:
Go to /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents folder
Edit Info.plist file with text editor (or XCode), add LSEnvironment dictionary for environment variable with full path. Note that it includes also /usr/bin etc:
<dict>
<key>LSEnvironment</key>
<dict>
<key>PATH</key>
<string>/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/dev/android-ndk-r9b</string>
</dict>
<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
<string>Eclipse</string>
...
Reload parameters for app with
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -v -f /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app
Restart Eclipse
Let me illustrate you from my personal example in a very redundant way.
First after installing JDK, make sure it's installed.
Sometimes macOS or Linux automatically sets up environment variable for you unlike Windows. But that's not the case always. So let's check it.
The line immediately after echo $JAVA_HOME would be empty if the environment variable is not set. It must be empty in your case.
Now we need to check if we have bash_profile file.
You saw that in my case we already have bash_profile. If not we have to create a bash_profile file.
Create a bash_profile file.
Check again to make sure bash_profile file is there.
Now let's open bash_profile file. macOS opens it using it's default TextEdit program.
This is the file where environment variables are kept. If you have opened a new bash_profile file, it must be empty. In my case, it was already set for python programming language and Anaconda distribution. Now, i need to add environment variable for Java which is just adding the first line. YOU MUST TYPE the first line VERBATIM. JUST the first line. Save and close the TextEdit. Then close the terminal.
Open the terminal again. Let's check if the environment variable is set up.
I took the idiot route.
Added these to the end of /etc/profile
for environment in `find /etc/environments.d -type f`
do
. $environment
done
created a folder /etc/environments
create a file in it called "oracle" or "whatever" and added the stuff I needed set globally to it.
/etc$ cat /etc/environments.d/Oracle
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export SQLPATH=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export TNS_ADMIN=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2/network/admin
It is recommended to check default terminal shell before setting any environment variables, via following commands:
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh
If your default terminal is /bin/zsh (Z Shell) like in my case (Personally prefer Z Shell), then you should set these environment variable in ~/.zshenv file with following contents (In this example, setting JAVA_HOME environment variable, but same applies to others):
export JAVA_HOME="$(/usr/libexec/java_home)"
Similarly, any other terminal type not mentioned above, you should set environment variable in its respective terminal env file.
More detail, which may perhaps be helpful to someone:
Due to my own explorations, I now know how to set environment variables in 7 of 8 different ways. I was trying to get an envar through to an application I'm developing under Xcode. I set "tracer" envars using these different methods to tell me which ones get it into the scope of my application. From the below, you can see that editing the "scheme" in Xcode to add arguments works, as does "putenv". What didn't set it in that scope: ~/.MACOS/environment.plist, app-specific plist, .profile, and adding a build phase to run a custom script (I found another way in Xcode [at least] to set one but forgot what I called the tracer and can't find it now; maybe it's on another machine....)
GPU_DUMP_DEVICE_KERNEL is 3
GPU_DUMP_TRK_ENVPLIST is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_APPPLIST is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_DOTPROFILE is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_RUNSCRIPT is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_SCHARGS is 1
GPU_DUMP_TRK_PUTENV is 1
... on the other hand, if I go into Terminal and say "set", it seems the only one it gets is the one from .profile (I would have thought it would pick up environment.plist also, and I'm sure once I did see a second tracer envar in Terminal, so something's probably gone wonky since then. Long day....)
Step1: open ~/.bash_profile
Now a text editor opens:
Step2: variable name should be in capitals. in this example variable is NODE_ENV
Step3: export NODE_ENV=development
Save it and close.
Restart your system.
Done.
To check env variable: open terminal and type
echo $NODE_ENV
I compiled Emacs 23 on OS X Leopard and I am loving it. But one thing I noticed when I switched from Aquamancs is that I am no longer able to access my environment variables that I specify in my .bash_profile file. For instance, I have a line:
export WORK=/Users/myname/Documents/otherpaths/Work
So to open files I can type in the minibuffer:
Find file: $WORK/projectname/filename.txt
or something to that effect, to save myself the trouble of typing the whole file path.
I found some instructions on editing ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, .profile, and .login files from this site:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CarbonEmacsPackage
but does not appear to work and I am not certain it is applicable. I wonder if anyone knows of a solution? Thanks in anticipation,
-Stephen
you can tell emacs any environment variable by putting a line like
(setenv "WORK" "/Users/myname/Documents/otherpaths/Work")
in your emacs config file (.emacs, .emacs.d/init.el or whatever you use)
Probably Aquamacs and CarbonEmacs uses some tricks to achieve that without specifying it by hand. Take a look at the source code of both.
I tried looking for the .emacs file for my Windows installation for Emacs, but I could not find it. Does it have the same filename under Windows as in Unix?
Do I have to create it myself? If so, under what specific directory does it go?
Copy and pasted from the Emacs FAQ, http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/:
Where do I put my init file?
On Windows, the .emacs file may be called _emacs for backward compatibility with DOS and FAT filesystems where filenames could not start with a dot. Some users prefer to continue using such a name, because Windows Explorer cannot create a file with a name starting with a dot, even though the filesystem and most other programs can handle it. In Emacs 22 and later, the init file may also be called .emacs.d/init.el. Many of the other files that are created by Lisp packages are now stored in the .emacs.d directory too, so this keeps all your Emacs related files in one place.
All the files mentioned above should go in your HOME directory. The HOME directory is determined by following the steps below:
If the environment variable HOME is set, use the directory it indicates.
If the registry entry HKCU\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs\HOME is set, use the directory it indicates.
If the registry entry HKLM\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs\HOME is set, use the directory it indicates. Not recommended, as it results in users sharing the same HOME directory.
If C:\.emacs exists, then use C:/. This is for backward compatibility, as previous versions defaulted to C:/ if HOME was not set.
Use the user's AppData directory, usually a directory called Application Data under the user's profile directory, the location of which varies according to Windows version and whether the computer is part of a domain.
Within Emacs, ~ at the beginning of a file name is expanded to your HOME directory, so you can always find your .emacs file with C-x C-f ~/.emacs.
There's further information at HOME and Startup Directories on MS-Windows.
It should be stored in the variable user-init-file. Use C-H v user-init-file RET to check. You can also open it directly by using M-x eval-expression RET (find-file user-init-file) RET
Open the file like this in Emacs for Windows:
C-x C-f ~/.emacs
More information in the Emacs Wiki
On my Vista box it's in C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\
Note that it may NOT be enough to just type Ctrl-x Ctrl-f ~/.emacs and create the file.
It may be that your Emacs application uses a different place to store your init file, and if so, then creating the file ~/.emacs simply creates a useless file which your Emacs application ignores.
Also, you may want to do more than just access the .emacs init file, but you may want to know where it is, i.e., its pathname.
To get at this there are two methods:
Easy way: type Ctrl + H V user-init-file Return
Slightly trickier way:
You can find out where your system is storing its own .emacs file by:
Click options and scroll down to "Set Default Font..."
Change the font setting and click okay
On the options menu, go down to "Save Options"
When the options are saved, the system saves its .emacs file,
and you can read the file path in the minibuffer at the bottom of the Emacs screen
In Windows 7 put your init.el file in C:\Users\user-name\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\, where user-name is your user/login folder.
Take care so your init.el file won't be named init.el.txt. This is something Windows does if you create your file with some editor like Notepad.
On versions of Emacs on Windows above 22, it seems to have moved to
~/.emacs.d/init.el
, ~ being the value of your environment variable HOME (see Control Panel → System → Advanced → Environment variables).
The file itself might not exist. In that case just create it.
You must create an emacs initialization file. One is not automatically created.
I had a similar issue and this answer tracks down what I did.
My issue was my ~/.emacs.el file was not loading. Strange because this has always worked for me.
This question/answer helped me but I had to put my init file in the %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\init.el because this is apparently the default behavior on Windows.
To troubleshoot this, I ran the following in the emacs *scratch* buffer.
user-emacs-directory
"~/.emacs.d/"
When I saw user-emacs-directory was ~/.emacs.d, I simply moved my .emacs.el file to %USERPROFILE%\.emacs.d\init.el. But this still didn't work.
I continued with expand-file-name as shown below:
(expand-file-name user-emacs-directory)
"c:/Users/pats/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/"
Got to love how Windows works. (not) So I moved my emacs.el file to the %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\init.el and this worked. The file was now being read. But I got other errors because my initialization file loaded other (personal emacs) files (in ~/myenv/emacs/*.el.
Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading ‘c:/Users/pats/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/init.el’:
Hum... Seems like all my files ~/myenv/emacs/*.el would need to be moved in order for this to work but I didn't want to do that. Then I realized that because the HOME environment variable was not set, emacs was performing its default behavior.
SOLUTION
Once I set my windows HOME environment variable to %USERPROFILE% everything began to work like it has for the past 25 years. :-)
To set the HOME environment variable, I typed WindowsKey+"edit environment variables for your account" to open the Environment Variables dialog box, and entered HOME=%USERPROFILE%.
Now my emacs initialization file .emacs.el is is back to its rightful place $HOME/.emacs.el and not in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\init.el
To be fair, if Windows had just one place to put files for user installed packages the solution of making HOME=%USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming might be acceptable, but because some applications use %USERPROFILE%, some use %USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming and others use %USERPROFILE\AppData\Local it just makes it difficult to know where to find your configuration files.
I prefer having everything in my %USERPROFILE% or $HOME directory.
Another similar question was here:
Emacs init.el file doesn't load
As kanja answered, the path to this file is stored in the user-init-file variable (or if no init file exists, the variable contains the default value for where to create it).
So regardless of which of the possible init file names you are using, and which directory it is in, you should be able to visit your init file with:
M-: (find-file user-init-file) RET
Or display its full path in the echo area with:
M-: (expand-file-name user-init-file) RET
On Emacs 23 and Windows 7 it only works if you set:
HKCU\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs\HOME
After Emacs 27.1, emacs has started respecting the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. The init file or the init directory can now be found in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/emacs/init.el.
In Windows $XDG_CONFIG_HOME could translate to %LOCALAPPDATA%.
In any case you can use the following emacs variables to find out the location of the your initialization file by M-x eval-expression
user-init-file
or the emacs configuration directory
user-emacs-directory
I've found that Emacs 22 will occasionally open either "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\.emacs", or just "C:\Documents and Settings\username\.emacs" on my XP machine. I haven't found an explanation for why it occasionally changes it's mind.
~ will always point to whatever the current instance of emacs thinks is HOME, but kanja's tip (C-h v user-init-file) will always tell you what ~/.emacs actually maps to.
On Windows 8.1, if Emacs is started from Windows Explorer, a shortcut or from cmd console it uses C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming.emacs init file. When I start Emacs from PowerShell, Emacs looks for its init file in C:\Users\<USER> folder. The fix to this issue was to set the HOME user environment variable (Control Panel\System and Security\System->Advanced system settings->Advanced->Environment variables) to C:\Users\<USER>. After this change, no matter how I start Emacs, it uses the same init file (see the accepted answer of this question)
On Windows XP it's:
C:\Documents and Settings\yourusernamehere\Application Data\
There is a list of directories based on your Windows version and extra information:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Windows-HOME.html
For WIndows7& Emacs26.3：
if HOME environment is set, then the .emacs file should be in that folder.
otherwise, it should be in c:\.
In both cases, if .emacs is not there, _emacs should be used.
This is because we cannot create .emacs file according to the windows file naming rules.(but we can download or copy it from somewhere else).