[R-SIG-Mac] How to update Aquamacs Emacs to latest version of ess

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jul 29, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Dale Steele wrote:

> Hi - I'm a new mac user.  I've installed Aquamacs Emacs which includes
> version 5.3.10 of ess.  What is the best way to update my Aquamacs
> installation to use ess version 5.4?
>
> Thanks.  --Dale


I am going to make the presumption that you are generally familiar  
with Emacs and the ~/.emacs configuration file. Note that by default  
on OSX, hidden files and folders (eg. system files/folders and files  
beginning with a period) are not shown in Finder.

The easiest approach to the problem is to [create and] modify your  
~/.emacs file so that it has an entry that points to the version of  
ESS that you want to use. Since ESS will almost certainly be updated  
before Aquamacs releases new versions, this enables the two to be  
independent of each other.

So, download the ESS 5.4 tarball into Downloads. Create a folder there  
called 'ESS', move the tarball there and untar it so that it now  
creates a path called "/Users/YourUserName/Downloads/ESS/ess-5.4".  
Then in your ~/.emacs file, put the following line:

   (load "/Users/YourUserName/Downloads/ESS/ess-5.4/lisp/ess-site")

In both instances, replace 'YourUserName' with your home folder name  
(eg. /Users/dalesteele/...).

If you prefer to store things outside of the Downloads folder, modify  
the above path information as appropriate.

That's basically it.  As new versions of ESS become available, edit  
the above line in ~/.emacs so that it reflects the new ESS version's  
folder tree which will be version specific.

Also, as an FYI, there is an ESS specific list:

   https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/ess-help

HTH,

Marc Schwartz