Re: [h-e-w] pb with the use of Merge

[Stephen Leake]

LaurentHelpEmacsWind <address@hidden> writes:

> Dear Emacs for windows list,
>
>     I use GNU Emacs 21.3 and I have a problem when I try to merge two files 
> with the Merge menu. When I type "n" in the control panel to find the first 
> difference I have the following message :
>
>              /cygdrive/d/cygwin/bin/diff3: subsidiary program
> `/usr/bin/diff' not found
>
>          Since I can't install any software on my C: disk I installed
> emacs in D:\emacs directory and the cygwin programs in d:\cygwin and I
> added "d:\cygwin\bin"  in my PATH.
>
>   May somebody help me to make Merge work.

Others have pointed out the GnuWin32 port of diff.

However, Cygwin has _many_ tools that GnuWin32 does not.

To get Cygwin to work with Emacs, install it at the root of the drive.
In your case, that is "d:/". "Install" here means that is the
directory you type in the Cygwin installer dialog. The Cygwin
installer will warn you that installing at root is not recommended.
However, if you dig into the Cygwin documentation, the only problem
they point out is that you might have other stuff installed in d:/bin,
d:/usr, etc. I think that's up to you!

The reason this works is that Cygwin mounts / at the installation
directory, and any directory under / does not use the /cygdrive
notation. So if the installation directory is d:/, then any directory
d:/foo/bar will be shown as /foo/bar in Cygwin, rather than
/cygdrive/d/foo/bar. And the native Win32 Emacs will understand it.

Directories on c:/ will be /cygdrive/c/foo/bar. But it sounds like
that won't be a problem for you.

--
-- Stephe