Re: [h-e-w] ediff/diff not found

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:08:53 -0500
> From: "Buchs, Kevin" <address@hidden>
> 
> I have used ediff on an emacs installation on a Windows system I have at
> work which has Cygwin installed on it. Ediff works fine there. At home
> on a new system (Vista) I have put the latest 24.2.* emacs and installed
> Cygwin. If I M-x shell, I can find diff in the Path. Ediff, however,
> complains that it cannot find diff. Where does ediff look? I read the
> manual and it does not seem to discuss it. I haven't had trouble with my
> work system so why does it not just succeed at home?

My crystal ball says that your PATH outside Emacs and exec-path inside
Emacs are different, which is probably the consequence of the fact
that you mix Cygwin tools with a native Windows port of Emacs.

So "M-x shell" invokes the Cygwin Bash, which finds diff in some fake
/usr/bin directory, but Emacs looks for diff on PATH, which doesn't
include the directory mounted by Cygwin as /usr/bin (or whatever).

Keep PATH and exec-path identical, and you will keep your sanity.