How do you run Emacs in Windows?
What is the best flavor of Emacs to use in Windows, and where can I download it? And where is the .emacs file located?
I use EmacsW32, it works great. EDIT: I now use regular GNU Emacs 24, see below.
See its EmacsWiki page for details.
To me, the biggest advantage is that:
it has a version of emacsclient that starts the Emacs server if no server is running (open all your files in the same Emacs window)
it includes several useful packages such as Nxml
it has a Windows installer or you can build it from sources
And concerning XEmacs, according to this post by Steve Yegge:
To summarize, I've argued that XEmacs has a much lower market share, poorer performance, more bugs, much lower stability, and at this point probably fewer features than GNU Emacs. When you add it all up, it's the weaker candidate by a large margin.
EDIT: I now use regular GNU Emacs 24. It also contains Nxml, can be installed or built from sources, and with this wrapper, the Emacs server starts if no server is running. Cheers!
Note that GNU Emacs for Windows comes with two executables to start Emacs: "emacs.exe" and "runemacs.exe". The former keeps a DOS-Prompt window in the background, while the latter does not, so when if you choose that distribution and want to create a shortcut, be sure to launch "runemacs.exe".
Carl
Easiest way to find where the user init file is:
C-h v user-init-file
Easiest way to open it is (in the scratch buffer):
(find-file user-init-file)
and hit C-j to eval
Well, I personally really like what I have been using since I started with Emacs, which is GNU Emacs. It looks like it is built for windows too. That link also answers your .emacs file question. Here is a place you can download it. You should probably get version 22.2 (the latest).
If this is your first time, I hope you enjoy it! I know I absolutely love emacs!
I run it under cygwin. That also gives me a Unix-ish environment for shelling out commands with meta-!
I use a vanilla version of emacs. In my experience, this is very stable, simple, does everything I need, and doesn't add a bunch of bloat that I don't need. The .emacs file can be placed in C:\Users\YourName if the HOME environment variable is set. This is a great way to handle it because it works on a user basis and mimics emacs behavior on Linux. You can download the zip from any gnu software repository mirror in the emacs/windows folder. You want the file that is named emacs-xx.x-bin-i686-pc-mingw32.zip.
There are some great instructions for configuring emacs for windows here. Basically, "installation" boils down to:
Download emacs from a gnu mirror at emacs/windows/emacs-version-bin-i686-pc-mingw32.zip, and extract the zip to an appropriate folder. Preferably C:\emacs to avoid spaces in the filename.
Set the HOME environment variable to C:\Users\username (or whatever you want). Make it a user-only variable (if it is username-specific). This is where your .emacs file goes.
If you want a start menu or desktop shortcut, create a shortcut to bin/runemacs.exe.
Add c:\emacs\emacs-xx.x\bin\ to your path (user or system), so that you can run it from the command line.
Also, you can consider emacs-w64 for 64bit windows systems:
emacs-w64: http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacsbinw64/
See http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html. Section 2.1 describes where to get it, and section 3.5 describes where the .emacs file goes (by default, in your home directory, as specified by the HOME environment variable).
I've run both GNU emacs and Xemacs on windows. I used to use it as my primary editor, email client etc, but not it's "just" an editor.
When I recently reinstalled to Vista I installed the latest GNU version. It works fine. So does Xemacs, but it does look like GNU have got their sh*t together so Xemacs isn't as compelling anymore.
I suggest you to use development version of GNU Emacs 23, which is pretty stable and to be released relatively soon. You can get weekly binary builds from the link below.
Latest GNU Emacs as a zip archive
I have a portable version with .emacs configure ready, which setup org mode, I-do, etc. It also included org sample file. I think that is a better start point for new comers.
Basically run with runemacs.bat and everything is ready.
http://nd.edu/~gsong/portable_emacs.html
I've encountered this problem, and discovered the fault (at least in my case) to be the existence of c:\site-lisp\site-start.el, a file that was created when EmacsW32 was installed, and which was not removed when I uninstalled it. (Vanilla GNU Emacs for Windows has c:\site-lisp in its load-path, and will try to load this file, which somehow winds up triggering that error.)
Solution: removing that whole directory (c:\site-lisp) worked for me, but you should just be able to remove the site-start.el file.
The best place to start, to get an MS Windows binary for GNU Emacs is ... GNU Emacs:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
(Oh, and how did I find that URL? From the Emacs manual, node Distribution. If you have access to Emacs anywhere, that's the place to go for such information.)
On that page you will see everything you need to know about obtaining Emacs. In particular, you will find a section called Obtaining/Downloading GNU Emacs, which links to a nearby GNU mirror. Clicking that link takes you to a page of links that download all Emacs releases since release 21.
More imporantly here, on that page of links you will also see a directory link named windows. Click that to get a page of links to Emacs binaries (executables) for MS Windows. That is the page you want.
Knowing the above information can help when you need to find the page again, if you haven't bookmarked it. But here is the final URL, directly: http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/
When forced to use Windows, I ...
Download "Emacs for windows", and save it in some directory (henceforth referred to as EMACS_SOMEWHERE)
Drop a .cmd file in "Startup" to map, "My Documents" to H: drive with subst, or if "My Documents" resides on a remote server, I use the "Map Network Drive" thing in Explorer to have "My Documents" named H:. Then I create an environment variable named HOME in Windows and give it the name of "H:\". Now I can drop my .emacs file in "My Documents" and it will be read by emacs when it launches.
Then I create the H:\bin directory. Then I add "H:\bin" to my Windows "Path" environment variable.
Then I create a H:\bin\emacs.cmd file. It contains one line:
#call drive:\EMACS_SOMEWHERE\emacs-23.2\bin\emacsclientw.exe --alternate-editor=c:\programs\emacs-23.2\bin\runemacs.exe -n -c %*
This is a fair bit of work, but it will enable me to run the one and same emacs from either a windows command prompt or from a cygwin command prompt, provided that /cygdrive/h/bin is added to my cygwin PATH variable. Haven't used this setup for a while but as I recall, when I call the emacs.cmd with a new file over and over, they all end up being buffers in the one and same emacs session.
There was https://bitbucket.org/Haroogan/emacs-for-windows with the latest Emacs 25, but the whole page has been removed.
The benefit of this build and the emacs-w64 above is that they come with jpg, png, tiff DLLs as well as lxml DLL, which is needed for the new eww web browser.
I prefer to run Windows 10 + VcXsrv + Emacs 25 client in WSL. Emacs is my shell.
To access the .emacs file for your profile the easiest way is to open up emacs. Then do C-x C-, type in ~USERNAME/.emacs (or you can use init.el or one of the other flavours). Type your stuff into the file and C-x C-s (I think) to save it.
The actual file is located (in Windows XP) in c:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME.emacs.d(whatever you named the file), or the equivalent spelling/location on your system.
You can download GNU Emacs NT from here direct. It works fine in windows, make sure you create a shortcut to the runemacs.exe file rather than the emacs.exe file so it doesn't show a command prompt before opening!
XEmacs is less stable than GNU Emacs, and a lot of extensions are specifically written for GNU. I would recommend GNU > X.
You can place the .emacs file in the root of the drive it's installed on. Not sure whether you can add it elsewhere too...
Im using emacs32, I only have one problem with it really:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3625738/comint-previous-matching-input-in-emacsw32-is-not-interactive
If You Mean Emacs as Latex Editor for Windows 7.
Emacs4LS (Emacs 4 Latex Support under Windows 7) for newcomer for Emacs.
http://chunqishi.github.io/emacs4ls/
Easy Steps to Install.
Plugins Built-In.
Related
I used Mingw_get_inst and installed the MinGW compiler suite following the instructions on the howto page. I used the GUI installer. I then changed the path to include C:\MingW; . When I go to Start menu -> all programs -> MingW the only file that exists inside of there is a uninstaller. The howto page says a shell should be there... can someone help me get this working?
Howto page on Mingw.org: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started
simply you could run it from the following batch file:
e.g. C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat (if you installed your mingw in c drive)
for more info. about mysys, check this
Look at the install logs for your Mingw.
I have 2 bin dirs in my (single) installation of Mingw
C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin
and
C:\MinGW\bin
A lot has changed about Mingw in the last 2-3 years and I think some documentation you might find easily via google is out-of-date.
Try asking for help at mingw mail groups via Nabble (very easy to use)
IHTH
Adding the shell link is easy if you have MSYS installed.
Open your Start menu and right-click on "All Program" and choose either "Open" or "Open All Users" depending on which you want to set the shortcut for. Open the MinGW folder if it already exists, or create it (or an MSYS folder, as you wish) if it does not.
Open another Explorer window and navigate to your MSYS folder, in the default installation this is C:\MinGW\msys\1.0
Right-drag msys.bat from the MSYS explorer window to the start menu explorer window. Choose "Create shortcut" when prompted as to what you wish to do. Optionally, you may want to change the shortcut to use one of the MSYS icons from the MSYS folder.
According to older MSYS documentation, the shortcut should be set to start in the MSYS bin folder, in the default installation this is C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin. I'm not certain of what happens if you don't do this; the shell opens either way.
Et voilà! You now have a shell link for MSYS in your Start menu.
If you didn't have the shortcut, the other postinstall bits may not have run either. The easy way to check this is to look in C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\etc (or the appropriate path for your installation). If there is an fstab file, then the postinstall bits ran appropriately. If not, then go to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\postinstall and run pi.bat. This will make the mingw folder available from the msys shell. Things won't work right without doing this.
Update from March 2018: The MSYS postinstall is now a Lua script, and it won't create a shortcut by default. Best I can tell, you now must do so manually in all cases.
Look for the postinstall directory, run the batch file pi.bat in there and
answer the file path questions with the correct case sensitivity.
Then gcc is found.
CNTRL-SHIFT click and drag the msys shortcut onto the desktop.
This fixes it.
Pity the installation script is broken...
Go to your windows search and go to Apps and Features and then search for it, you can find the file location and then you can probably see docs and other files :)
I am learning SICP. I'm using Edwin 3.116 that installed with MIT-Scheme on my Windows 7 (32-bit) / AMD (64-bit) machine.
For the life of me I have not been able to discover why Edwin is unable to open and read a file correctly:
When I open an existing .scm file (with my code in it) Edwin just opens a blank buffer with my file name.
If I then save it, my code gets over-written with blankness. So clearly Edwin is not at pains to write.
Apart from not being able to find any answers, I have had no success with the following:
C-x C-f followed by full path D:\my-schemes\filename.scm (while the default directory was at C:.....)
M-x cd followed by d:\my-schemes followed by C-x C-f filename.scm
Quit, restart MIT-Scheme and re-try above commands
Uninstall-reinstall MIT-Scheme and re-try above commands
Is there something I have not done - like specify some parameter in some configuration file? (The Installation guide does not require any special config. for Windows, other than to follow the installer.)
I'm getting by with copy-pasting code from file-to-buffer and writing from buffer-to-file for now, but my scheming could be so much better if I could get Edwin to read too.
just in case you might not yet found a solution. I encountered the same problem and just found one that worked for me so I'm thinking sharing my solution.
If you installed with the default setting, everything is installed in 'Program Files/...'. The problem with this seems to be that the directory name contains space. When I tried saving in other directory without space, and I could write to a file. I can open the file with a normal text editor, but when I open with Edwin all I saw was a blank page. I tried installing an older version (MIT GNU scheme 9.0) and it worked as mentioned in this bug report: http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?35250
vutha's suggestion of installing in a directory without spaces didn't work for me because I needed to access files inside a folder with spaces in the name. But it pointed me in the right direction. There is a bug in versions 9.1 and 9.2 that completely brakes Edwin in Windows.
The only thing that worked was to uninstall the latest version (there is a uninst.exe file in the installation folder) and then install version 9.0.
Hi guys : I recently (accidentally) removed all folders/files from my .vim folder in mac os x (home directory).
I am trying to add in the Clojure Vim plugin (VimClojure) - its simply a folder which you are supposed to "drop into .vim/plugins".
I have added it, but I don't see any changes to the syntax highlighting when I launch vim. I'm not sure wether vim "sees" the plugin or not.
I'm on OS X .
Any ideas on how to debug the plugin ? In particular
1) How does VIM look for plugins ?
2) Are there files which need to be in $HOME/.vim/ ?
3) Is it sufficient to simply dump the unzip a new plugin file into $HOME/.vim/plugins when installing a standard vim plugin ?
Thanks
About debugging: in order to see whether vim has loaded your plugin you can use :scriptnames and also breakadd file /path/to/your/plugin (or breakadd file *your_plugin_name.vim: I never used absolute paths so I do not know what breakadd will do in this case). Other questions:
Described in :h initialization, precisely :h load-plugins.
Vim does not need any files at all (except vim executable, used shared libraries, dynamic linker and the kernel of course).
Follow installation instructions. Normally plugins are either extracted to ~/.vim or distributed as a singe file that should go to either ~/.vim/plugin (no s!), ~/.vim/colors, ~/.vim/ftplugin or such. I guess you should try to extract it to ~/.vim/plugin, but if archive contains some special directories like plugin/, ftplugin/, colors/, after/ (see /usr/share/vim/vim73 for a list) it is likely that it should go to ~/.vim. Also consider using vim-addon-manager, if plugin was posted on vim.org VAM is likely to be able to install it.
A few points.
How does vim look for plugins? See :help startup so see where and when vim looks for files to load.
Not really. Anything there is just personal customization. Vim will run fine without a .vim folder.
That all depends on the plugin. It sounds to me like the VimClojure plugin may be a little misleading. Do you have a link to the source you are using?
In any case, the first step I always take when attempting to debug a script is check the output of :scriptnames. This command will show you what scripts vim has loaded for the current session. If you see none of the files shipped with VimClojure, you probably made a mistake during the installation.
Another tip is that you really should look in to using a plugin manager such as vundle or vim-addon-manager, or at least the runtimepath manager pathogen. This seems to be the way of the future for vim configuration these days and it makes installing and managing plugins much easier. They also help to keep your .vim folder clean and organized.
The VimClojure directory should either be extraction on top of your .vim folder, or in a bundle folder if your using something like pathogen (which you should!). If you're starting from scratch, consider starting with vimclojure-easy (not to toot my own horn) which is a basic, full install of VimClojure with instructions.
I am trying to put together a portable set of files/scripts that will enable me to mimic a unix like environment on Windows.
I do not want to install anything. The setup needs to be able to live on a thumbdrive for example. Currently I am using UnxUtils to provide grep, and more. Im adding these to the Windows PATH environment variable in the current console session by
cd <pathToUnxUtils>
path = %PATH%;%CD%
For Vim (my preferred editor) I am using the "Win32 console executable" (http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc) vim.exe. If I have that in a drive such as \vim\vim73\vim.exe then $VIMRUNTIME is \vim\vim73, which is where my vimrc lives.
I am trying to get some syntax highlighting and indenting going next, which I believe I need to add the appropriate .vim scripts to $VIMRUNTIME\syntax and $VIMRUNTIME\indent
but it does not seem to work.
I am using the console executible instead of something like gVim (which probably does more of what I want "out-of-the-box") because I want to be able to send commands to the same shell using the ! command. gVim does not allow that (correct me if I am wrong)
Lastly, has anyone experienced trouble with "tail" from UnxUtils working on Vista?
I know this probably seems like a stupid way to go about things, but I am really trying to make this work. Id be happy with getting these bits of Unix goodness going on Windows.
Thanks for any help
Check out cygwin portable: http://symbiosoft.net/cygwinportable
Or this guide on how to make regular cygwin run on portable devices: http://sites.google.com/site/devinsezer/Home/software/portable-cygwin
The advantage of cygwin over a thin emulation layer like UnxUtils is that it includes a fully working X11 server so you can even run GUI unix apps if you need to (gitk for example, if you're using git)
I've had some troubles with UnxUtils before re currency - they don't seem to be as up to date as the GnuWin32 stuff (for example, TextUtils at 2.1 instead of 5.3).
I've simply downloaded the executables and required libraries for what I've needed (no install needed if you avoid the setup packages, just copy and go).
If you click on the package names on the left of that second link above (not the "Setup" on the right), it allows you to download both the executable plus all dependencies on a single page.
My particular needs for a recent project were met with sed and about four DLL files, no installation, no impinging on the environment or registry. In short, ideal for running from a memory stick or standalone CD.
I must, at some point, put together a CD with the entire suite on it. I used to carry around CygWin but the necessity to install was a pain.
I'm using MobaXterm from Mobatek.
http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/
It's not a complete envoirement, but is quite suficcient.
Just download and run!
It have an (ba)sh, with X, sed, grep, awk, rsync, wget, sftp, scp; and some extra plugins (standalone files to put in the same dir) to VIM, EMACS, perl python, Gcc, gdb, mplayer, svn, git, lua graphviz...
It still provides many protocols (RDP, VNC, SSH, telnet, rsh, FTP, SFTP and XDMCP).
Either MSYS or CH will do that, there is a specifically portable VIM at portable apps
Cygwin and MSYS provides all you need. I have used both and I think MSYS runs faster than Cygwin on a Windows machine. Cygwin emulates the UNIX environment whereas MSYS is port of the GNU utils to Windows.
Another option to get portable GNU utils is to install Portable MsysGit.
http://www.cygwin.com/ is very popular.
update: oh, never mind - I don't think it can be xcopy deployed.
-Oisin
I've had good luck with running Cygwin on a thumbdrive. I haven't run it on machines where older versions are installed. But I don't expect to have that problem often.
Here is what I did: http://fadedbluesky.com/2011/portable-cygwin/
I'm reinstalling everything on my machine, and amongst those is Cygwin. I'm trying to avoid reinstallation, partly because I don't even know what it is that I've installed. Can I just move the Cygwin directory from one machine to another and expect everything to work, or are there some other important settings that I need to move as well?
As far as I saw, it's pretty self-contained, but one never knows.
Yep! Go for it. You won't encounter any problems.
You can just copy the entire cygwin directory to your new machine, open up the cygwin shell and everything (as long as you are only calling cygwin-internal programs and stuff that's within the path) will just work as if you you are working on your old machine.
The only thing you'll loose is the directory where the "already downloaded and compressed" packages for a possible re-installation are stored. Fortunately this directory is optional, so no problem for migration to another platform. You could copy that directory as well, but most likely all the packages that you have are outdated anyways and a run of setup.exe would fetch the new versions anyway...
Btw - since someone said exactly the opposite some real-life experience: I use this feature quite often with success. I've copied my cygwin dir to USB-sticks and used it on friends computers. I also copied it to the laptop of my fiance when we go to holidays and take a laptop with us.
It always worked without any problems....
The short answer is: No, you can't copy the whole Cygwin folder. You just copy the configuration files(bash files, vim file, etc.) you need.
The long answer is: If you copy the whole Cygwin folder, it may work in some case, and may not in some other case.
The reason is: you will lose linux file mode when copying files on Windows. And that will cause a lot of troubles. However, you may not have the troubles when you use Cygwin just like a common Windows Program(which means you don't care file mode and anything related), and run it as Windows Administrator(which is not required when Cygwin is installed as usual).
BTW: you can export the packages you installed by cygcheck.exe -c and install them on the new Cygwin. You can also install/update Cygwin packages by Cygwin's setup-x86_64.exe in command line like:
setup-x86_64.exe -q -P package1,package2,package3
No, you have to reinstall it from the cygwin installer, sorry!
Most importantly you'll want to copy everything from your home directory (default is c:/cygwin/home/) especially anything w/ a "." in front of the filename.
As for individual application preferences, etc., you may lose those -- but if you do the reinstall while you still have access to your old machine -- you can probably get to 90% of your previous install without too much trouble.
My experience with copying from one cygwin64 (I don't think there is a difference) to another machine is that all of the symbolic links got crushed:
As an example:
What used to be /usr/bin/cc -> /usr/bin/gcc.exe (or something like that)
After the copy /usr/bin/cc became a text file containing the string:
!<symlink>/usr/bin/gcc.exe
My method of copy was merely cp -r /cygwin/c/cygwin64 <dest>
My dest was a FAT32 FS, but I don't think that had anything to do with it.
There were also characters 0x00 and 0xFF sprinkled among many of these 'text' files so that they appeared to be binary.