Emacs installed with the Ubuntu application manager runs but isn't in the $PATH. Where is it?

Question

Emacs 26.2 is installed with the application manager, not apt-get.

When calling it in the terminal I get :

samusz@samusz-K55:~$ emacs

La commande « emacs » n'a pas été trouvée, mais peut être installée avec :

sudo apt install emacs25      
sudo apt install emacs25-nox  
sudo apt install e3           
sudo apt install emacs25-lucid
sudo apt install jove         

(emacs command couldn't be found, but can be installed with...)

samusz@samusz-K55:~$ whereis emacs
emacs: /etc/emacs /usr/share/emacs
samusz@samusz-K55:~$ which emacs
samusz@samusz-K55:~$ ^C
samusz@samusz-K55:~$ 

there is no binary in /etc/emacs nor /usr/share/emacs, just config files !

So as a get-around I'll uninstall and get fresh binaries but I am interested as to what I do wrong. Or may be Ubuntu is not getting better if they can't configure the path when installing binaries.

I hate it when things get hidden away.

Is this a bug or a feature? (and if does it need reporting where ?)

(I was trying to get pdf-tools working when hit this wall)

Answer 1

On Ubuntu 18.04, the emacs package is a meta-package. If we look at it's dependancies...

❯ apt-cache show emacs |grep Depends
Depends: emacs-gtk (>= 1:26.1) | emacs-lucid (>= 1:26.1) | emacs-nox (>= 1:26.1)

From the terminal we can find which dependency was installed...

❯ dpkg --get-selections |grep ^emacs
emacs                       install
emacs-bin-common            install
emacs-common                install
emacs-el                    install
emacs-gtk                   install
emacsen-common              install

In this case, you'll notice that of the three options, emacs-gtk was installed. We can then look at the contents of that package...

❯ dpkg -L emacs-gtk
/.
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/emacs-gtk
/usr/share
/usr/share/applications
/usr/share/applications/emacs-term.desktop
/usr/share/applications/emacs.desktop
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/emacs
/usr/share/emacs/26.1
/usr/share/emacs/26.1/etc
/usr/share/emacs/26.1/etc/DOC
/usr/share/lintian
/usr/share/lintian/overrides
/usr/share/lintian/overrides/emacs-gtk
/usr/share/man
/usr/share/man/man1
/usr/share/doc/emacs-gtk
/usr/share/man/man1/emacs-gtk.1.gz

You'll notice, that in /usr/bin the file emacs-gtk was installed.

You can find some other "emacs" stuff that might be installed in /usr/bin/

❯ ls -l /usr/bin/emacs*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       23 May  3 16:04 /usr/bin/emacs -> /etc/alternatives/emacs*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       29 May  3 16:04 /usr/bin/emacsclient -> /etc/alternatives/emacsclient*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    31272 Apr 10 16:53 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39926024 Apr 10 16:53 /usr/bin/emacs-gtk*

Alternatively you can use the search facilities at https://packages.ubuntu.com/.

If you think that a package is broken, file a bug with Ubuntu.