How to best integrate Emacs and Cygwin?

Question

There are a ton of ways to integrate Cygwin with Emacs on Windows. EmacsWiki shows a few ideas. Here are the options that I\'ve found:

1. Use the Emacs that com

Answer 1

I like the xemacs version that you get from the Cygwin setup program. Works out of the box, the Alt key maps to Meta just fine, and the bash shell buffer is there whenever you need it.

Answer 2

FWIW, I use the normal GNU Emacs Windows releases, and I use Cygwin. I've never had any problems, but I don't do much with Cygwin outside Emacs. Oh, and I'm using an old version of Cygwin (with all versions of Emacs).

For setup, I load these two files, in order:

• http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/cygwin-mount.el
• http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/setup-cygwin.el

Answer 3

I installed cygwin on the root. It explicitly warns you against it, but I saw no ill effects. (I found that piece of advice from Steve Yegge).

I also installed cygwin-mount, which helps a bunch. Also, I had to switch from ispell to aspell. Finally, a little bit of .emacs tweaking, and I was good to go:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;CygForTheWin
;;*cygwin
(when (equal system-type 'windows-nt) 
(message "Setting up Cygwin...")
(let* ((cygwin-root "c:")
       (cygwin-bin (concat cygwin-root "/bin"))
       (gambit-bin "/usr/local/Gambit-C/4.0b22/bin/")
       (snow-bin "/usr/local/snow/current/bin")
       (mysql-bin "/wamp/bin/mysql/mysql5.0.51a/bin/"))
   (setenv "PATH" (concat cygwin-bin ";" ;
                          snow-bin ";" 
                          gambit-bin ";"
                          mysql-bin ";"
                          "c:/usr/local/jdk1.60_03/bin/"
                          ".;")  
           (getenv "PATH"))
   (setq exec-path (cons cygwin-bin exec-path)))

(require 'cygwin-mount)
(cygwin-mount-activate)

(setq shell-file-name "bash")
(setq explicit-shell-file-name "bash")

(defun jonnay-cygwin-shell ()
  "Wrapper around cygwin-shell so that it doesn't throw an error"
  (interactive)
  (condition-case e
   (cygwin-shell)
   (message "There was an error trying to launch the shell: %s" e)))

(message "Setting up Cygwin...Done")


;; found from the manual, check, use and make go?
 (defun my-shell-setup ()
   "For Cygwin bash under Emacs 20"
   (setq comint-scroll-show-maximum-output 'this)
   (setq comint-completion-addsuffix t)
   (setq comint-eol-on-send t)
   (setq w32-quote-process-args ?\")
   (make-variable-buffer-local 'comint-completion-addsuffix))

(setq shell-mode-hook 'my-shell-setup)
(add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook 'jonnay-cygwin-shell)
)

Answer 4

The best solution must be cygwin emacs-w32. It using win32 native gui, and using cygswin POSIX system. That means you have a windows native gui program and all the cygwin path, shell working.

Installation is very easy: setup.exe --> emacs-w32. Now the version number is:24.2.93.1

So good.

Answer 5

Just like @justinhj, I use the native version of emacs on windows in conjunction with the (also native) ports of gnu utils (e.g. binutils for 'strings', etc.).

And I always use cygwin as the shell, within Emacs or independently of Emacs. That way, I retain the look & feel of my work environment when I switch back & forth from Windows to/from Linux/AIX/Solaris.

Unfortunately however, when I upgraded my Emacs from 21.2 to 23.2, Emacs lost its ability to recognize '/cygwin/c' by default. I have to research this now to see why it isn't working anymore and what I can do to fix that. I just found the following information and I'll check it out to see whether this is helpful. It seems odd that now that I need an external package for something that used to be always there by default:

• Re: /cygdrive/c vs c:
• cygwin-mount.el

I prefer, however, to minimize the use of additional packages. So, I just checked further the behavior of my "new" Emacs + Cygwin and it seems that I can access the C: drive by simply typing '/'.

That is cool - only one character (slash) instead of /cygdrive/c. However, the shell within Emacs prompts with '/cygdrive/c', a somewhat confusing difference.

Answer 6

Use the Emacs in Cygwin. Not XEmacs..Emacs. I just install everything from Cygwin and type the following to run Emacs:

XWin -multiwindow
export DISPLAY=:0.0
emacs&

It may also help to create a link to your C drive (or any other drive) like so:

ln -s /cygdrive/c /c

I've been using this for several months and it always works well. I constantly use advanced features like TRAMP and subversion without any issues. All advanced packages like cedet just work.

If you hadn't noticed, I am the original poster. After all of my research and attempts, this one worked and I am VERY PLEASED. Good job Cygwin!

Also, I recommend not using shell within Emacs. Utilities like top just don't seem to work. Instead, use MinTTY and screen. Cygwin gives you ssh directly in MinTTY (you don't need putty). The best part is that a lot of my Linux knowledge works seamlessly in Windows.