Re: no package.el emacs 24.5.1

[John Mastro]

Sanjeev Sariya <sanjeevsariya@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Emacs community,
>
> I'm new to emacs. I'm trying to add couple of bells and whistles to it.
> I upgraded it's version to 24.5.1 Mac OSX

Welcome!

> When I type emacs on terminal I get:
>
> ;; This buffer is for notes you don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.
> ;; If you want to create a file, visit that file with C-x C-f,
> ;; then enter the text in that file's own buffer.

This is expected - it's the *scratch* buffer. If you instead invoke
Emacs as `emacs /path/to/file' it will start you in a buffer showing
that file's contents. Or, as the note above says, you can use `C-x C-f'
(control-x followed by control-f) to open a file from within Emacs.

> There's no package.el present in
>
> ~/.emacs.d/

This too is expected - package.el is installed along with Emacs's other
Lisp source files, not in your ~/.emacs.d/

> Without this nothing would load, and no M-x would work.

Can you be more specific regarding "nothing would load"? What did you
try and what errors did you receive?

One thing you should probably do is to add this form at the top of your
~/.emacs.d/init.el file:

(package-initialize)

M-x not working might be related to your terminal rather than Emacs
itself. For instance, on OS X I believe you use the "option" key for
meta (rather than command, as I personally prefer and originally
expected).

How did you install Emacs? You might find it more comfortable to use
Emacs in its GUI mode rather than at the terminal.

-- 
john