home directory and .emacs file in Windows 7

问题:

I installed emacs 23.3.1 in c:/emacs-23.3. Following the hints in this page, I updated the site-start.el to set HOME environment variable.

(setenv "HOME" "c:/users/USER/emacs")

And I made c:/users/USER/.emacs (like I did in unix/mac) to write the code for using slime, but it doesn't seem to start slime correctly.

Is this a correct way of setting emacs in Windows 7? Where do I put the .emacs file?

回答1:

You need to set HOME in environment variables in Computer settings (if I remember correctly), or put init file to default directory (just start Emacs, and press C-x C-f ~/ to see what is actual directory). And as I remember, on Windows, init file could be called _emacs...

回答2:

I am running emacs as a portable app and this works very well for me:

Create a batch file in the root of your emacs directory. For example, I created:

C:\Dropbox\PortableApps\emacs-24.3\run_emacs_portable.bat

Then, edit the file and put this text into it:

set HOME=.\
bin\runemacs.exe %*

Now, I just launch emacs via the run_emacs_portable.bat file and my HOME folder always points to my emacs installation folder.

The %* allows you to pass arguments to the .bat file and have them forwarded to the runemacs.exe

回答3:

Inside the home directory .emacs.d is created automatically, and you can make init.el as a startup file. Also refer to this question.

回答4:

To setup Emacs home folder in your Windows User folder (C:\Users\User\.emacs.d) just add this code to your current init file and restart Emacs.

(when (eq system-type 'windows-nt)
  (unless (getenv "Home")
    (shell-command (format "setx \"%s\" \"%s\"" 'Home (getenv "UserProfile")))))

回答5:

I liked Роман Захаров's answer which seems good for maintaining a cross-platform configuration, but it didn't work.

This is what finally worked for me.

(when (eq system-type 'windows-nt)
  (setenv "Home" (getenv "UserProfile")))

回答6:

you can start emacs, type M-x pwd and that will show you where you are in the Windows file tree. You can put your .emacs there.

回答7:

On Windows, Emacs is started with some Properties defined, found when you right-click the executable on your windows system. There you can define the

1. execution-directory, e.g. "C:\Users\loggedin_user\" (in parantheses)

2. where emacs executes

3. and looks for the .xemacs (.emacs) directory, where it find its init.el.

4. And where you can define the startup instructions (like (setenv "HOME" "c:/Users/Username/") ) etc.

If you configure that, the next time, emacs starts from the directory, you defined, with the initialisation-file

回答8:

If you want to use c:/users/USER/.emacs, you should have set your HOME variable to c:/users/USER, not c:/users/USER/emacs.