Re: Installing the current emacs-28 branch under Windows 10

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "H. Dieter Wilhelm" <dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de>
> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2021 11:26:22 +0200
> 
> setting in ~/.bashrc:
> 
> INFOPATH="/d/Emacs/emacs28/share/info/":$INFOPATH
> 
> (Otherwise I'm loosing the GNU core util infos.)
> 
> Info-directory-list became then:
> ("D:\\Emacs\\emacs28\\share\\info\\" "D:\\appl\\MSYS2\\usr\\share\\info")
> 
> Works for me, at least when starting under the MinGW shell, thank you
> very much!  But why is Emacs switching here to the Windows path
> notation, I thought Emacs is using internally always slashes?

It's not Emacs that does that, it's MSYS.  One of the "special things"
it does, and the reason why it's a fork of Cygwin, is that it converts
Posix-style /foo/bar file names to Windows-style X:\SOMETHING\foo\bar,
where "X:\SOMETHING" comes from MSYS notion of where the root of the
Posix tree lives, unless the original file name starts with something
like "/d/", in which case it's converted to "D:\".  Emacs can deal
with both forward and backslashes alike.

> Then, I've to check if this works when starting Emacs without a shell.
> Presumably not, maybe I've to set then the environment variable in the
> OS?

Yes, if you install the Info files unrelated to Emacs in a place that
doesn't match the value of Info-default-directory-list.

> >> By the way, there was no runemacs.bat in the installation directory
> >> created.
> >
> > Neither should there be.  Why did you expect to see runemacs.bat?
> 
> I think runemacs.bat is coming from the Emacs installers for Windows.
> Its sole content is:
> 
> runemacs.exe -Q
> 
> Helpful, didn't know that, but I'd rename it to emacs-Q.bat...

I think this batch file shouldn't be there, as it just muddies the
waters.  But it isn't our call to make, it's the call of those who
produced the batch file and added it to the distribution.

> Well, the next topics will be the "little helper" programs ;-)
> 
> M-$
> apply: Searching for program: No such file or directory, ispell
> 
> and gpg when doing (list-packages)

You need to install those programs, and make sure they are MinGW
programs, not MSYS programs.  The latter might work, but could have
subtle "issues", because they are not really native Windows programs,
whereas the Emacs you built is.

> Command output:
> gpg: keyblock resource 
> '/c/Users/uidg1626/.emacs.d/log/c:/Users/uidg1626/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg/pubring.kbx':
>  No such file or directory

That it reports an MSYS-style file name means you are invoking Emacs
from MSYS shell.  Don't.