Re: emacs 23 & Debian

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

Ben Badgley <mortecanine@peoplepc.com> writes:

> 1. Where and how may a person upgrade to version 23 for Debian?
>
> I'm a simple 'go grab a .deb and install it' sort at this point, although
> am getting better with using the console. So, please avoid saying cvs or
> git, subversion. Have a friend coming over for the weekend who may better
> explain that voodoo to me
>
> 2. Why did the Debian Emacs release come over as a bit hindered?
>
> Noticed this on the Emacs Wiki threads about Emacs on Debian. It couldn't
> sort out what was where, or its version. There was some code to attempt
> correcting it posted as well.
>
> 3. And will future Debian releases of Emacs be so?
>
> Hope not on this end.
>
>

Just put 

Francois Romain maintains debian packages of version 23. Go to

http://emacs.orebokech for instructions on how to get them. 

I'm running a mixed testing/unstable version of Debian and have the
following in my sources.list file

deb http://emacs.orebokech.com sid main
deb-src http://emacs.orebokech.com sid main

I have no idea what that reference to the wiki is about. I have been
running CVS emacs for ages now on Debian without any problems. However,
if you do want to be able to use the debian elisp packages, you do need
to edit at least the startup.el file to add the Debian specific paths
and the emacs-version variable. The emacs-snapshot package from the site
above has already done this, so it will work with all the pre-built
debian emacs packages. The emacs snapshot packages from the above site
are re-built and updated every couple of weeks or so, which means they
stay relatively current with the latest CVS version.

Ive been running either the Debian emacs packages or the ones from the
above site since 2001 and have found nothing 'hindered' about the Debian
version. This comment probably is based largely on the fact that Debian
does its emacs packaging so that you can run multiple different versions
of emacs on the same system at the same time without them treading on
each others toes. some consider this makes things too complicated, but
I've personally found it very handy and its not caused any issues for
me. Sometimes, its useful to be able to bring up emacs 21 or 22 or 23 or
xemacs - especially if your developing some elisp and you want to test
compatibility. 

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au