Emacs in Windows

Question

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?

Answer 1

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!

Answer 2

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).

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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...

Answer 7

I use EmacsW32, it works great.

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.

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

I run it under cygwin. That also gives me a Unix-ish environment for shelling out commands with meta-!

Answer 10

Im using emacs32, I only have one problem with it really:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3625738/comint-previous-matching-input-in-emacsw32-is-not-interactive

Answer 11

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