Re: Question - Is this the right group to ask for GNU emacs init load errors? Thanks -Peter Below is my --debug-init error messages. What am I doing wrong?

[John Mastro <john.b.mastro@gmail.com>]

To your question in the subject - yes, this is a good place to ask.

GNU_BABY_STEP <ptech42002@gmail.com> wrote:
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (file-error "Cannot open load file" "package")

This error is saying Emacs couldn't find package.el, which provides
Emacs's package-management functionality.

My guess is that your init.el assumes you have package.el available, but
your Emacs binary predates it. To check what version of Emacs you're
running, invoke Emacs with "emacs -Q" (which will start Emacs without
loading your init file) and use the `emacs-version' command (i.e. type
M-x emacs-version RET) to see what version it is. The package.el library
was added in Emacs 24.

> File error: Cannot open load file, no such file or directory, shell-integration.el

And this error is saying Emacs couldn't find shell-integration.el, which
I'm not familiar with. My suggestion is to figure out the problem with
package.el first and then come back to this, since getting package.el
working may solve both.

If my hunch above is right and you need a newer Emacs, you have several
options. The ones I'm aware of are:

- "GNU Emacs for Mac OS X". These are basically vanilla GNU Emacs
  binaries but compiled by a third party. https://emacsformacosx.com/
- Use Homebrew. If you're not already familiar with Homebrew, I would
  suggest skipping this for now.
- Emacs Mac Port: https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/overview
- Aquamacs: http://aquamacs.org/

I haven't used either of the last two personally, which is why I can't
say much about them. My impression is that they both seek to integrate
Emacs with OS X better or make use of OS X features that GNU Emacs
doesn't. They both seem to be actively maintained and well regarded.

If you have no idea which you prefer, I would suggest the first one,
since it's the closest to "just give me an up-to-date GNU Emacs binary".

Hope that helps

        John