Re: Newbie question re ediff

[Wilmar Igl]

Hi, Matt!

As far as I know, Emacs is supposed to be integrated  in a UNIX/LINUX 
environment and calls certain commands which are supposed to be 
available under those OS, e.g. ispell or diff.

I had the same problem like you and solved it by installing the 
(suprise, suprise) free "Windows Services for Unix" (SFU) which is 
available from

http://www.microsoft.com/germany/windowsserver2003/technologien/sfu/default.mspx

Installing another Unix emulation, like Cygwin, will do the same job, 
but is more difficult to install. I only tested the ediff functions with 
SFU with two buffers, but it worked fine.

If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Wilmar from Wuerzburg

PS: I'd rather use a more uptodate version of EmacsW32 (with Win32 
adaptations included) which is available from 
<http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html>.


mkeller schrieb:
> Hi all,
>
> This comes from a emacs novice. I've searched the old posts and found
> several querries related to mine, but all the answers are over my head...
> thus, please answer like you're talking to a "emacs challenged" person when
> replying :).
>
> I use emacs version 21-3 for programming in R (ESS). I'm running on Windows
> XP. I would really like to use the "ediff" or "diff" functions but cannot
> figure out how to do this. If I simply go to Tools -> Compare I get this:
>
> "No such file or directory, diff"
>
> After reading previous querries & responses on this forum, I installed
> diffutils-2.8.7-1.exe and placed those utilities in the folder: C:\Program
> Files\GnuWin32.
>
> Now someone on a previous response said you need to change your _emacs file
> "appropriately," but I have no idea how to do that. Do I need to change the
> _emacs file so that emacs knows where to find the diff program? If so, how
> do I do that? If not, what do I need to do to use diff within emacs?
>
> Appologies for the level of this question, and thanks in advance,
>
> Matt