Re: Updating from Emacs 23.3.1 to 25.3

["Patricia J. Hawkins" <phawkins@connact.com>]

Congratulations, my combined emacs config files have 1644 lines of actual
not-commented-out code.  (I should REALLY clean them up, but hey, they do work.)
They've been evolving since maybe 1990... I didn't think to capture my first set of
emacs config files which I started ~1986.

SO, when stuff breaks for whatever reason, here is what I do:

If the break is non-obvious, I just do divide-and-conquer to figure out what isn't
working in my .emacs or other setup files.

Comment out the bottom half of your .emacs (roughly; obviously you don't break code
to do this.)  I generally comment it with something like ";;PJH;;" using "string
rectangle" so it's easy to strip out again.

Does that work? Yes? Great!  Drop a comment line at the top of the commented section:
;;PJH works to here <2017-10-10 Tue>

Strip the comments from the top half of the commented section.  Restart emacs.

Doesn't work? Great! The problem is in the chunk you just uncommented. Comment out
half of it.  Restart emacs.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Oh, and if you're not sure if a particular config file is getting read or not, go put
an obvious error in it. Or add a line that will do something clear and obvious.  (I call
this, "If you can't fix it, break it worse.")

And as for directories moving around, below is a chunk from a historic .emacs file of
mine; note the commented-out code. 

I had this thing shared with a Windows virtual machine, and running OK on both
the Ubuntu host and OSCAR, the Windows virtual machine, which had my elisp directory
mounted as z:

Oh, and then I did some fun stuff with guix, but IMO it's not ready for prime time
yet, so the directory structures from that are commented out too.

I do go for pragmatic over nice...

;; BEGIN .emacs CODE CHUNK
;;
;; (if (equal system-name "OSCAR")
;;     (setq pjh-base-lispdir "z:/elisp"
;; 			 pjh-emacs-base-lispdir  "c:/emacs/emacs-23.1-bin-i386/emacs-23.1/"
;; 			 custom-file "z:/.emacs-custom.el"
;; 			 )
  (setq  pjh-base-lispdir (expand-file-name "~/elisp/")
			pjh-emacs-base-lispdir "/usr/share/emacs/"
;         pjh-emacs-base-lispdir "/home/pjh/.guix-profile/share/emacs"
         custom-file "~/.emacs-custom.el")
;;  )


;(if
;    (not (equal (expand-file-name "~/elisp") (car load-path)))
    (custom-set-variables
     '(load-path
       (append (list

		pjh-base-lispdir
		(concat pjh-base-lispdir "ljupdate")
;		(concat pjh-base-lispdir "i3-emacs")
		(concat pjh-base-lispdir "g-client")
		(concat pjh-base-lispdir "site-lisp/w3m")
		(concat pjh-base-lispdir "emacs-calfw-master")
;	
;		"/gnu/store/02ynsjc924vi2p36dxgz7r7q10wr2k41-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/" ; what's in my personal guix installation
;		"/home/pjh/.guix-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp" ; what's in the base emacs guix installation

;		"/home/pjh/Downloads/guix-0.10.0/emacs/" 
;		(expand-file-name "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/")

;		(expand-file-name "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacs-goodies-el/")
		(concat pjh-base-lispdir "/home/pjh/.emacs.d/elpa") ;stuff installed from elpa

		)
               load-path
               ))
     )

;(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/directory-with-guix.el")
;(with-eval-after-load 'guix-autoloads nil t)
;(require 'guix-autoloads nil t)


>>>>> "PW" == Paw Writer <pawwriter@comcast.net> writes:

PW> I am looking for some help with Upgrading Emacs. My current version is
PW> GNU Emacs 23.3.1. EMacs is now up to 25.3 and has a different

PW> directory structure. my .emacs has over 100 lines and doesn't run on

PW> 25.3 and I have one of my utilities which has been completely

PW> rewritten on 25.3 and won't run on 23.3.1.

 

PW> I have tried Googling updating Emacs and have not found any detailed

PW> help on what to do. Could someone give me some help?

 

PW> I just think I need someone here with me to walk me thru it. I already have
PW> 25.3 on my computer, in an Emacs1 directory, but the directory structure is
PW> so different, I have so much in my .emacs, and I need updated versions of
PW> many of the procedures and am not sure where to get them all. I live near
PW> Harrisburg, PA.

 



-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins