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I have this linux box without root access with a quite old emacs, so I downloaded the latest version and built as follows:

  • download to $HOME/SRC
  • configure and build in $HOME/BLD with --prefix=$HOME
  • make and make install

So this creates a bin folder in my home directory which is what I expected.

Now when I type emacs directly from terminal, it still opens the old one (as expected). So, I have to do ~/bin/emacs. I added this alias emacs=$HOME/bin/emacs to my .bash_profile which works. But I could have also added ~/bin to $PATH. However, not quite sure which one is recommended. And would the 2 versions of emacs work without any conflict e.g. both sharing and overwriting ~/.emacs each time a different version is opened.

Which is the best way to install new applications without root access where an older version is already present, and if the steps I followed are right.

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  • emacs is quite large. You should discuss either upgrading the existing emacs that's installed, or supporting multiple versions of emacs with your sysadmin. Commented Mar 3, 2012 at 16:30
  • possible duplicate of How to run my own program without specifying its path Commented Mar 3, 2012 at 23:44

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Adjust your PATH. It simplifies execution, works as expected, and once you install more applications with your $HOME as prefix, they'll all work as expected. I'd do something like this in my RC file:

PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH LD_RUN_PATH=$HOME/lib:$LD_RUN_PATH export PATH LD_RUN_PATH

Setting LD_RUN_PATH should allow locally-install DSOs to work too.

What you've done to install emacs so far is pretty much the way it's done in multi-user environments.

Clarification: paths in Unix (and other software that use them, from DOS to TeX) work like lists of places, searched left to right. On Unix, we use colons (:) to separate the entries. If you have a PATH like /usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin, and you're looking for a program called foo, these paths will be searched for, in order:

  1. /usr/local/bin/foo
  2. /bin/foo
  3. /usr/bin/foo

The first of these found is used. So, depending on where exactly you insert a directory, you can make your installed binaries ‘override’ others. Conceptually, the order of PATH is traditionally specific-to-generic or local-to-global. (of course, we often add weird paths to support self-contained third-party applications and this can break this analogy)

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  • just to confirm, if I add $HOME/bin to my PATH, all programs installed there will take precedence over those (existing older versions) installed as root in /usr/bin and other locations in PATH? Basically does it matter to append or prepend $HOME/bin to PATH? e.g. PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin instead of the above. And one more question, what if I want to install a newer version of the same program in $HOME/bin? I am guessing it would append the version number to the new files? Commented Mar 3, 2012 at 14:04
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    @vis: the directories in $PATH are tested from left to right, so PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH makes versions in $HOME/bin override the others, with PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin, your version will only be used if no other is present. Re the new versions: usually, no version number is appended automatically. It's probably a good idea to rename the executables/directories and put symlinks in (so ~/bin/emacs is a symlink to ~/bin/emacs-26.3.1 which is the executable that make install called emacs). Commented Mar 3, 2012 at 14:56
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    Some info for completeness: /usr/bin is for binaries included with the distro / package manager. Place your own binaries in /opt or /usr/local/bin. That way a system upgrade won't risk wiping your manual binaries. Commented Mar 3, 2012 at 18:49

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