Getting ESS to work with Xemacs on Windows XP

ESS (emacs speaks statistics) is a package for (X)emacs which knows how to format R files correctly (R mode). It also allows you to call R from inside an emacs shell.

Here I provide brief instructions on how to install ESS, assuming you have already installed Xemacs and R.

• Create a directory where you keep emacs lisp files, such as C:\Program Files\XEmacs\xemacs-packages\lisp\ess.
• Download the latest version of ESS.zip from here into this directory. (There is a file called "LATEST.IS.ess-5.2.9" or whatever that tells you what the most recent version is.)
• Unzip ess-5.2.9.zip and you will create a directory called C:\Program Files\XEmacs\xemacs-packages\lisp\ess/ess-5.2.9.
• Ensure that the HOME environment variable is defined to your home directory. To do this, open Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment variables -> User variables, and define HOME to be C:\kmurphy (or whatever). To check this worked, open a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd) and type "echo %HOME%" and it should say "C:/kmurphy". As another check, start emacs and open a file (ctrl-x ctrl-f), and type ~/foo.txt, where foo.txt is the name of a file in C:/kmurphy.
• Make a directory called ~/.xemacs.
• Make a file called ~/.xemacs/init.el and add the following line:

  (load "C:/Program Files/XEmacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/ess/ess-5.2.9/lisp/ess-site")
  

  To check this work, restart emacs and open a file with a .R or .r extension: it should format it properly (with color) and say "ESS[S]" at the bottom line of the window to indicate that emacs is in ESS mode.

For instructions on how to use ESS, see An introduction to ESS + Xemacs for Windows Users of R by John Fox.