RHEL7 and derivative Linux distributions like CentOS7 ship with Emacs 24.3.
My other Emacs configuration repository moved forward without concern about maintaining backwards compatibility with Emacs 24.3 because, at the time, it was convenient enough for me to compile a more recent version of Emacs and run that from a central network location.
Lately I've had to work on machines without a networked home drive, and copying around my own build of Emacs is inconvenient.
So, this is a minimal configuration I can quickly clone onto a RHEL7 machine.
Git submodules are used instead of ELPA/MELPA in this configuration. To check them out, after cloning, run:
git submodule update --init
Running the script emacs24.sh will change the value of $HOME to
the parent directory of your checkout before running /usr/bin/emacs.
There are other ways to change the source of your init files, but this
serves well enough for my purposes. See also: How to start emacs
with a custom
user-emacs-directory
To use this repository, you might do something like:
mkdir -p $HOME/emacs24/master
git clone https://github.com/jlucas/emacs-24.3.d $HOME/emacs24/master/.emacs.d
Then run:
$HOME/emacs24/master/.emacs.d/emacs24.sh
To run without having to type the full path, add an alias to your
shell initialization files (e.g. ~/.bashrc) like:
alias e24=$HOME/emacs24/master/.emacs.d/emacs24.sh
After which you could just run:
e24