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I tried to install emacs-snapshot through their PPA on a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-elisp/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install emacs-snapshot

But when i try to start it, it gives me this error: 

emacs-snapshot
Warning: Could not find simple.el or simple.elc
Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, warnings

I have also tried running it as sudo, and the same thing happens. I do not have an .emacs.d/ folder, so it should just run as vanilla.

Do anyone have any idea how i can make it work?

DalekSall
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  • The same thing happened to me today. I stupidly updated the emacs-snapshot package (i'm on linux mint 17.2) and i got this error. – Arjun J Rao Nov 18 '15 at 09:12
  • I think using stable release of Emacs is better idea, compile emacs is easy, for example: https://github.com/favadi/build-emacs. – favadi Nov 18 '15 at 14:37
  • @favadi is correct. Build emacs from source and avoid distros. –  Dec 28 '19 at 16:06

2 Answers2

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I have the same issue. It looks all el-files were placed into incorrect directory. I'm not sure but I found 2 directories in /usr/share/emacs for 25.0.50 and 25.1.50. The version of my emacs is 25.0.50 and I think it's the latest version but all required files in directory 25.1.50. I just renamed original 25.0.50 directory and created symlink with name 25.0.50 to point to 25.1.50. It works for me.

Vitaly Aksionchyk
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I have encountered the same phenomenon today and Googled the message and I reached here. The workaround that Vitaly has worked, but I wonder why I could install Emacs just by $ sudo apt install emacs before but I could not then.

I asked the same question in the Japanese Stack Overflow and a person told me that simple.elc is included in the dependent library emacs25-common.

So I ran $ sudo apt install emacs25-common and then I could fix the problem.

Maybe it was because I installed the older Emacs before. I thought I have purged the old Emacs but maybe the old libraries have remained somehow. ANd when I re-installed emacs25-common, I could overwrite the old library with the correct one so I could fix it.

Pseudo code: 1) install Emacs with $ sudo apt install emacs 2) if succeed => congrats! your work has done 3) else if you got the massage simple.elc missing then $ sudo apt install emacsXX-core (where XX is version number)

Hope this helps.

Chihiro Fukazawa
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