windowsemacswindows-10emacs-preludeemacs-helm

How to install emacs prelude on Windows

I tried following the docs exactly:

git clone git://github.com/bbatsov/prelude.git C:\emacs24.5\prelude
ln -s C:\emacs24.5\prelude C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d
cd C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d

Then I tried copying C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\prelude\sample\prelude-modules.el to various places:

C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\prelude-modules.el
C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\prelude\prelude-modules.el
C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\prelude\installation\prelude-modules.el
C:\emacs24.5\prelude\prelude-modules.el

When I start emacs, it starts as though prelude was not there: I don't seem to get any indication that prelude has loaded correctly at all.

For example, M-x prelude- returns no matches. I uncommented the (require 'prelude-helm) but M-x helm- returns no matches.

How do I get prelude working?

Solution

  • Note that on my machine, the directory ~ expands to C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming

    I strongly recommend that Windows users set the HOME environment variable to something like C:\Users\YOURNAME

    I managed to install prelude by:

    git clone git://github.com/bbatsov/prelude.git C:\emacs24.5\prelude
ln -s C:\emacs24.5\prelude C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming
mv C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\prelude C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d

    Then started emacs, which failed due to no GnuTLS being installed, so I found this issue and followed this help page which fixed it. Basically, I installed GnuTLS from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/ into my emacs/bin directory and all seems to be working.

    I then tried to add my old .emacs file to C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming. However, this broke prelude completely, so I found that I should simply add my customisations to C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\personal\custom.el

    I also wanted find and grep to work properly. Emacs needs the posix versions of these commands rather than the Windows versions. Luckily, I had GitHub Desktop already installed, which has them, so I added the following to my PATH environment variable before system32:

    C:\Users\blokeley\AppData\Local\GitHub\PortableGit_c7e0cbde92ba565cb218a521411d0e854079a28c\usr\bin

    The long code after PortableGit will be different in your case.

    Happy days.