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Is Emacs all that useful on Windows where even the most basic Unix commands aren't available? Is M-x grep even available? Or does Emacs require a Cygwin / Ubun

by copperx 10y ago

Is Emacs all that useful on Windows where even the most basic Unix commands aren't available? Is M-x grep even available? Or does Emacs require a Cygwin / Ubuntu Subsystem?

agumonkey 10y ago
Depends, if you need OS interaction you'll need a posix-like subsystem indeed[1]. But first I write mostly lisp (ml, js and python) and I just can't live without paredit and second emacs extensibility is a drug to me now. Everytime I have to use anything else I feel crippled. [1] I installed msys2 which is less crufty than cygwin.
- mappu 10y ago
  Msys2 by design restricts the available packages to those useful for compiling software for Windows. The emacs package is in their separate mingw repository, which means the produced binary is a Windows program and does not understand the posix environment at all (i.e. no /proc/, /dev/ etc). Cygwin is an OS that runs on top of windows - all cygwin programs are windows programs but not all windows programs are cygwin programs. The emacs package for cygwin can fopen() /proc/ and /dev/, use the linux socket API, and in general follow the linux makefile more closely.
ww520 10y ago
Emacs is very useful on Windows. There are different packages run the Unix command tools on Windows. M-x grep works just fine.
Koshkin 10y ago
GnuWin32 complements emacs quite nicely. (It is an extensive set of natively built GNU utilities - no emulation is required.)
douche 10y ago
The nox version works beautifully in the new ubuntu subsystem bash console. I've never tried using any of the graphical versions.
- tonyarkles 10y ago
  Any chance you were successful at building it from source in the Ubuntu subsystem? I got some weird errors related to maybe shared memory or something and gave up.
  - douche 10y ago
    No, i just did sudo apt-get install emacs24-nox. I haven't had great luck with build tools. I broke the whole thing two or three times trying to install ghci.
    - KC8ZKF 10y ago
      Have you noticed it is impossibly slow to start up?
kaushalmodi 10y ago
I have installed the ezwinports versions of grep and find on Windows 7 64-bit ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/grep-2.10-w32-bin.zip/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/grep-2.10-... and https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/findutils-4.2.30-5-w32-bin.zip/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/findutils-... ). They work great.
omaranto 10y ago
I'd say you are correct in thinking you need a few UNIX tools to make Emacs on Windows comfortable. But maybe it's fewer than you think. I just had to get grep, find, diff and now use Emacs on both Linux and Windows and feels almost the same. In fact, that's part of what I love about Emacs: for the most part I don't have to worry about learning how to do stuff on Windows, I just do it in Emacs.

by copperx 10y ago

Is Emacs all that useful on Windows where even the most basic Unix commands aren't available? Is M-x grep even available? Or does Emacs require a Cygwin / Ubuntu Subsystem?

agumonkey 10y ago

Depends, if you need OS interaction you'll need a posix-like subsystem indeed[1]. But first I write mostly lisp (ml, js and python) and I just can't live without paredit and second emacs extensibility is a drug to me now. Everytime I have to use anything else I feel crippled. [1] I installed msys2 which is less crufty than cygwin.

mappu 10y ago
Msys2 by design restricts the available packages to those useful for compiling software for Windows. The emacs package is in their separate mingw repository, which means the produced binary is a Windows program and does not understand the posix environment at all (i.e. no /proc/, /dev/ etc). Cygwin is an OS that runs on top of windows - all cygwin programs are windows programs but not all windows programs are cygwin programs. The emacs package for cygwin can fopen() /proc/ and /dev/, use the linux socket API, and in general follow the linux makefile more closely.

ww520 10y ago

Emacs is very useful on Windows. There are different packages run the Unix command tools on Windows. M-x grep works just fine.

Koshkin 10y ago

GnuWin32 complements emacs quite nicely. (It is an extensive set of natively built GNU utilities - no emulation is required.)

douche 10y ago

The nox version works beautifully in the new ubuntu subsystem bash console. I've never tried using any of the graphical versions.

tonyarkles 10y ago
Any chance you were successful at building it from source in the Ubuntu subsystem? I got some weird errors related to maybe shared memory or something and gave up.
- douche 10y ago
  No, i just did sudo apt-get install emacs24-nox. I haven't had great luck with build tools. I broke the whole thing two or three times trying to install ghci.
  - KC8ZKF 10y ago
    Have you noticed it is impossibly slow to start up?

kaushalmodi 10y ago

I have installed the ezwinports versions of grep and find on Windows 7 64-bit ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/grep-2.10-w32-bin.zip/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/grep-2.10-... and https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/findutils-4.2.30-5-w32-bin.zip/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/findutils-... ). They work great.

omaranto 10y ago

I'd say you are correct in thinking you need a few UNIX tools to make Emacs on Windows comfortable. But maybe it's fewer than you think. I just had to get grep, find, diff and now use Emacs on both Linux and Windows and feels almost the same. In fact, that's part of what I love about Emacs: for the most part I don't have to worry about learning how to do stuff on Windows, I just do it in Emacs.