How to *properly* set up Emacs on Windows?

[Joost <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

Hi list,

I've recently had to set up Emacs on Windows, having used it for over two decades on Linux exclusively. Unfortunately, I'm constantly running into small issues that give me the impression there's something wrong with my setup, but unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out what exactly.

So, the tl;dr of it is this: What would I need to do to get Emacs running on Windows in such a way that easily access utilities such as git, diff and hopefully a few more (ag or rg would be nice, gcc and libgccjit for when I decide to move to Emacs 28) from within Emacs, and also have a graphical Emacs?

The thing that prompted me to post this message is that I ran into the issue described here:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2021-05/msg01296.html

In short, the variable `package-gnupghome-dir` is set to "c:/Users/joost.kremers/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg", but when I try to install / update packages, I get an error saying:

keyblock resource '/c/Users/joost.kremers/.emacs.d/elpa/c:/Users/joost.kremers/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg/pubring.kbx': No such file or directory

Note the path.

I can set `package-gnupghome-dir` to "/c/Users/joost.kremers/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg" and that will fix this issue, but it doesn't feel like it's the right solution.

Eli Zaretski's comment in the message I linked to most likely applies to my
case: "Looks like you are mixing MSYS2 executables and native Windows (a.k.a.
"MinGW") executables [...]".

To be honest, though, I'm not entirely sure how I got myself into that situation. I don't even have a good understanding of MSYS2 and MinGW and the differences between them.

I *think* it happened when I tried to use some external utilities from within Emacs, mainly git and diff, for which I modified my PATH variable.

So, does anyone have any advice on how to get out of this situation and get a better Emacs setup on Windows? Any and all hints very much appreciated!

TIA

Joost



-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments