-> What is this? : This is my emacs setup, geared towards ruby/rails and elisp, once-in-a-while c++ development.

-> How to use this thing? : Assuming you are on unix/mac.... these steps should work....

$ cd
$ echo "(load-file \"~/.emacs.d/emacs.el\")" > .emacs
$ git clone git://github.com/janmejay/emacs.git
$ ln -s emacs .emacs.d
$ cd ~/.emacs.d
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ cd vendor/rinari
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ # install texinfo (Documentation system for on-line information and printed output) (debian users can fire up "sudo aptitude install texinfo" assuming aptitude is installed)
$ # download elib(file named elib-1.0.tar.gz) from http://nixbit.com/cat/programming/libraries/elib/ and change to the directory elib is stored in
$ tar -zxvf elib-1.0.tar.gz
$ cd elib-1.0
$ make # build it
$ # edit Makefile, change "install: all installdirs install-info" to "install: all installdirs" (this is install target around line number 61) (install info fails)
$ sudo make install # installing elib
$ emacs --debug-init # verify if require for avltree bombs (if it does, that means site-lisp dir to which elib was installed is not in the load path). If not in the load path already, add (add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/elib") as first line to ~/.emacs to make elib available to emacs.
$ emacs --debug-init #this will show you the stack trace if something is wrong (i guess ~/.emacs.d/defunkt/erlang.el may pop errors, because of path issues, change those paths to your system's erlang installation path)
$ emacs -q # to byte compile js2(javascript mode). JS2 is slow for big files when not compiled. Use "M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.emacs.d/vendor/js2.el RET". This should generate js2.elc(which is the byte compliation output)(warnings can safely be ignored).
$ # doing emacs --debug-init again should start without any errors
$ emacs #and enjoy the setup

change the directory locations to fit your taste.

-> How do i find out what went wrong when i tried to do THAT? : M-x 'toggle-debug-on-error' and it will show you what went wrong.

-> How often should i pull? : May be once in a while, i will keep adding/removing/modifying things to make them work better for me, you may like those modifications, so pulling once in a while may be something you want to do...)

-> Why have i not tried/added/enabled that cool addon called X? : Because i didn't know about it... please drop me a message on my github profile... :-)