Re: emacs-home variable for Windows

[Bernardo <bernardo.bacic@pobox.com>]

zugzwang said the following on 10/15/09 12:15:
> On Oct 14, 4:49 pm, "B. T. Raven" <ni...@nihilo.net> wrote:
>> Lennart Borgman wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 6:50 AM, B. T. Raven <ni...@nihilo.net> wrote:
>>>> Lennart Borgman wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 2:00 AM, ken <geb...@mousecar.com> wrote:
>>>>>> I carry a USB stick to the job.  It's got emacs installed on it and
>>>>>> there's a link on my desktop that I click (after inserting the stick)
>>>>>> and emacs fires up.  It's nice.  I use it every day.  With the paucity
>>>>>> of decent editors from Windows, I *need* it.
>>>>>> There's a couple minor hassles though that I'd like to dispense with.
>>>>>> One is that I don't know a way to tell emacs what the HOME directory is.
>>>>>>  In the past I've just gone into the registry and change some variable
>>>>>> there.  I don't remember where that is or how to do it though.  Besides,
>>>>>> I prefer to have the variable defined in my .emacs (which is at the
>>>>>> top-level directory on the USB stick).  (After emacs loads, I do "M-x
>>>>>> loadfile RETURN e:/.emacs" and that little task loads up the rest of the
>>>>>> stuff emacs needs to know.  But I don't know how tell emacs to make e:/
>>>>>> the home directory.
>>>>> There is a library usb-setup.el in Emacs+EmacsW32 for this.
>>>> Can this .el file be downloaded separately from EmacsW32 to use with the
>>>> standard Emacs w32 build? Is it somewhere in nXhtml 1.97 or has it been
>>>> removed?
>>> No, at the moment it is only in Emacs+EmacsW32 and I have not had time
>>> to setup a repository for that.
>>> However all that file does is to use the ideas from
>>>  http://at-aka.blogspot.com/2006/06/portable-emacs-22050-on-usb.html
>>> and reorganises them a bit. So just look there instead.
>> Thanks, Lennart. I almost understand the stuff at that link but I can't
>> see how the variable 'data-directory refers to the right drive letter
>> until after Emacs is launched from the flash drive. The drive letter
>> could be G:\ when plugged in today and H:\ tomorrow.
>>
>> With GnuW32 utils I got as far as producing:
>>
>> df -a | tail -1 > usbemacs.bat
>>
>> with the result:
>>
>> STORE N GO             4021232   1850100   2171132  47% G:\
>>
>> I am at a loss as to where I should go from here.
>>
>> Thanks again,
>>
>> Ed
> 
> I've never used emacs, and my Dos batch-writing skills are rusty, so
> all I can offer is a conceptual solution.  Presumably, your emacs
> distribution contains a directory not found on any other drive (e.g.
> <drive_letter>:\MyEmacsDir\).  Any unique path will do.  Simply have
> the desk icon start a batch file that begins as follows:
> 
> dir C:\MyEmacsDir\
> If error: directory not exist, continue : else set variable_1 to 'C'
> and then goto Label_1:
> 
> dir D:\MyEmacsDir\
> If error: directory not exist, continue : else set variable_1 to 'D'
> and then goto Label_1:
> 
> dir E:\MyEmacsDir\
> If error: directory not exist, continue : else set variable_1 to 'E'
> and then goto Label_1:
> 
> ...
> 
> Label_1:
> set <Emacs_Home> to %variable_1%<desired_path>
> execute %variable_1%:\<desired path_name + executable file_name>
> 
> 
it is simpler if you start with Andreas' batch file, copy it to the USB 
drive and modify the first line from:
   set HOME=e:
to
   set HOME=%CD%

double clicking on this batch file should work regardless of the drive 
name letter