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Hi there and season's greetings, As a total non-programmer I need help on how to prepare my Macbook Air OS X 10.10.5 for installation of Aquamacs. I have been running Spacemacs, which uses its own .spacemacs initialization file but I am concerned that my lack of knowledge of what/where other Emacs files/folders exist on my machine could mean trouble when I install Aquamacs. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Many thanks, Chris.

Christopher J Poor
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    Unless you cannot live without the OSX native spellchecker, you should do yourself a favor and forget about using Aquamacs -- there is really no other reason to use Aquamacs (in my opinion). Use this instead: http://emacsformacosx.com/ Other people will tell you to try homebrew or macports, but only the one I just mentioned will put everything in the `Emacs.app` bundle. Both homebrew and macports will install the guts in other areas of the computer, which just makes life a pain in the neck -- especially if you want to synchronize everything across multiple computers, and backing up as well – lawlist Dec 28 '15 at 04:55
  • Hi lawlist, thanks for your quick reply. I assume that because emacsformacosx puts everything in the Emacs.app bundle there is no need to worry about conflicts with Spacemacs - which I can keep and run also? – Christopher J Poor Dec 28 '15 at 06:41
  • I installed emacsformacosx but running the app gives the same Spacemacs Emacs as I was already running. I'm sorry for my ignorance but I guess there must be an initialization file somewhere that points Emacs to the .spacemacs file. I do like Evil anyway. – Christopher J Poor Dec 28 '15 at 07:19
  • Sticking with spacemacs for now. Thanks. – Christopher J Poor Dec 28 '15 at 12:27
  • Spacemacs is just a bunch of `elisp` user customizations and additional third-party libraries designed for the generic build of Emacs -- i.e., it is nothing special because it doesn't really alter the Emacs build. [I seriously doubt that anyone spent significant time making sure that Spacemacs plays nice with Aquamacs, but I could be wrong?] Aquamacs is a bunch of C-Source modifications and customizations by the developer, and on top of that, a whole bunch of additional `elisp` modifications and customizations by the developer plus some additional third-party libraries. – lawlist Dec 28 '15 at 16:54
  • Here is a link to a very informative thread that describes the differences between the various builds of Emacs for OSX: http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/271/what-is-the-difference-between-aquamacs-and-other-mac-versions-of-emacs – lawlist Dec 28 '15 at 17:03
  • Just as a contrary view, I would highly recommend homebrew over aquaemacs or the emacsformacosx site. The reason is that you just get basic and current emacs. Yes, it is installed in /usr/local, but all your configuration lives under ~/.emacs.d. You can then use something like https://github.com/purcell/emacs.d to configure a good working environment. You can also use hombrew to install spelling support. The advantage of this approach is that it is a standard emacs setup, which means more support/advice from the community, which is very valuable – Tim X Dec 29 '15 at 03:11
  • Hi Tim. I'm not sure what you mean re homebrew. Are you suggesting I use homebrew to install emacs so that it is in /usr/local? Would you then advise that I ditch Spacemacs or use it along with Purcell's config? Would installing with homebrew require uninstalling emacs first? - Thanks. – Christopher J Poor Jan 04 '16 at 23:40
  • Thank you for the advice. I have been persevering with Spacemacs and have even written an elementary guide: An Absolute Beginners Guide to Spacemacs for Academic Writing: https://ontologicalblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/an-absolute-beginners-guide-to-spacemacs-for-academic-writing/ – Christopher J Poor Oct 18 '16 at 15:18

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