This should provide a saner set of defaults than you get normally with Emacs. It's intended for beginners, but it should provide a reasonable working environment for anyone using Emacs for dynamic languages.
- Install Emacs (at least version 22) Use your package manager if you have one. Otherwise, Mac users should get it from Apple. Windows users can get it from GNU.
- Move the directory containing this file to ~/.emacs.d
- Launch Emacs!
If you are missing some autoloads after an update (should manifest itself as "void function: foobar" errors) try M-x regen-autoloads.
If you want to keep your regular ~/.emacs.d in place and just launch a single instance using the starter kit, try the following invocation:
$ emacs -q -l ~/src/emacs-starter-kit/init.el
Libraries from ELPA (http://tromey.com/elpa) are preferred when available since dependencies are handled automatically, and the burden to update them is removed from the user.
See starter-kit-elpa.el for a list of libraries that are pending submission to ELPA.
If you know your way around Emacs, please try out the starter kit as a replacement for your regular dotfiles for a while. If there's anything you just can't live without, add it or let me know so I can add it. Take a look at what happens in init.el to get started.
Also: see the file TODO.
The latest version is at http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit/