Re: [h-e-w] Cant run ediff

[Michael R. Wolf]

"Bingham, Jay" <address@hidden> writes:

> I am having the same problem.  I have installed cygwin and the
> problem persists.  So there is more to making this work than just
> installing cygwin.  I have tried adding the path to the variable
> diff-command, this has not produced any different results.  So my
> question is once you have cygwin installed how do you tell emacs
> that it is there?  I have looked through the documentation on cygwin
> and have not found any mention of how this would be accomplished,
> nor can I find information in the emacs info pages (I did not really
> expect there to be any thing there since this is a problem peculiar
> to emacs on Windows).  The FAQ for emacs in windows does not have
> any information that I found useful.  All it says is to get cygwin
> and install it.

I'll bet it's a PATH problem.  I started down this path a while ago,
but got distracted.  Here's what I know, and pointers to what I
don't.  If anyone builds on this discussion to find a solution, please
share it with us all.

When cygwin starts a bash, it looks for /etc/profile and a ~/.bashrc.
(There's obviously some magic to use such Un*x paths on a WinDOS box.)
That path will locate /usr/bin/diff using the 'which' built-in.  So if
I started gnu emacs from that shell, I'd inherit the PATH, and
*should* be able to run ediff from within emacs.  I haven't tried it.

The trouble (as I see it) is that I dont't start emacs from a cygwin
bash console window.  I start it from the runemacs shortcut on my
desktop.  That's for hysterical reasons -- I got emacs before cygwin,
and got used to doing it that way.

SO -- I see it as a cultural issue.  On Unix, I'm accustomed to having
an environment that gets set up when I login.  Since emacs and cygwin
bash are both Un*x-like add-ons, they don't fit into the "environment"
as WinDOS defines it.

Suggestions:
        1) Have the desktop shortcut do something like this:
                /path-to../bash -c /path-to../runemacs.exe
        Benefits:  Uses *both* the WinDOS shortcut paradigm and the
                /etc/profile and ~/.profile paradigms

        2) Call runemacs.exe or emacs.exe from a cygwin bash window

        3) [[boo, hiss]] -- Use elisp to augment the PATH environment
           variable with /cygdrive/c/usr/bin or c:/cygwin/usr/bin.  It
           works, but doesn't play well.  Requires double editing any
           time any profile is changed.  Once for cygwin.  Once for
           emacs. 


-- 
Michael R. Wolf
    All mammals learn by playing!
       address@hidden