Greetings from North Carolina State University: NCSU is a large US university (n(students) ~= 30000) with an engineering focus. Computationally we run a mix of architectures in a semi-unified system optimistically called "Unity." The "client side" includes Solaris http://www.ncsu.edu/it/pub/unity.html NT4 http://www.ncsu.edu/mtip/zen/labs/ Red Hat Linux http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/realmkit/ and Mac http://www.ncsu.edu/mac/ Unfortunately Unity users have not IMHO been well exposed to Emacs: for the past 5 years, Emacs has only been only available on Solaris, and the default version has been (and is still) 19.29 (though 20.3 is there for those who know how to access it). However, as part of NCSU's Open Source Initiative, our ITD (Information Technology Division) has decided to better integrate Emacs into NCSU computing; I have been invited to help. If all goes well, filespace will be made available, and packages will be made more user-friendly via such means as the Novell Application Launcher on NT and our "add" packaging scripts on the Unixen. (Note that I believe we'll be deploying GNU, not XEmacs, unless there's some very compelling reason(s).) Not being a "major league" sysadmin, I'd appreciate any assistance anyone might care to offer regarding how to do this, especially from folks who have actually done this :-) I want to help NCSU deploy Emacs in such a fashion that: * JDE works on as well as possible, on as many platforms as possible. Note that JDE appears to have been a major consideration in ITD's decision; NCSU's computer science curriculum recently moved from C++ to Java as its primary pedagogical language. * as many of the client platforms as possible are covered, with the newest stable versions on each. * it works on AFS. This is our primary filesystem for all clients. * users have easy-to-use multiplatform configurability. A single .emacs would be great, but alternative mechanisms would be considered. Note that few users use all of our client platforms (especially not at the same time), but there are substantial numbers of users that use either Solaris and Linux, Solaris and NT, and NT and Mac. Your input would be appreciated, especially regarding such matters as - how to setup JDE and JDK(s) for flexibility and ease-of-use. - what to put in site-lisp and what to keep separate - how to organize directory trees - how to do default .emacs - Mac Emacs. I know it's there, but I've never used it. I'll admit that it's my lowest-priority platform, but I'd like to provide it if possible. - anything I might have missed :-) Pointers to documentation especially appreciated, but any assistance is appreciated. TIA, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
