How can I have a portable Emacs?

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Ray picture Ray · Dec 8, 2008 · Viewed 18.7k times · Source

Is there a way run Emacs from a USB drive? I am a Windows user and I would like to be able use it on any PC without an Emacs install.

Answer

ShreevatsaR picture ShreevatsaR · Dec 8, 2008

Yes, the "normal" Emacs distribution for Windows is precompiled and just runs without having to do any install. Just get one of the *.zip files from the usual place, unpack it onto a USB disk, and you can use it directly. (The actual binary is inside the "bin/" directory.)

The only thing you may want to do is set it up to look for ".emacs" always on the USB disk instead of on your hard drive; see 

 (info "(emacs) Windows HOME")

on how to do that.

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