Adam’s Emacs Configuration README

Welcome

This is meant to be consumed by anyone who wants to work with Emacs. The configuration here is meant as either a starting place for you as a beginner or a place to find some Emacs tricks for those with more experience.

Everyone needs to develop their Emacs style and this configuration certainly represents my style. You can adopt, delete, rant or ignore any part of this configuratoin to your heart’s desire.

Quick start

All you need to do to adopt this configuration for a new Emacs installation:

• Install a copy of Emacs 25 or greater
• Select one of these methods to populate
  1. Create a ${HOME}/.emacs.d directory and copy the init.el and custom.el files into the newly created directory
  2. Clone this repo into the .emacs.d directory

     $ git clone https://github.com/Atman50/emacs-config.git ~/.emacs.d
             

• Start emacs. NOTE: this can take a while as it’s loading/compiling bunches of packages included by init.el. To get a feel for what it’s working on you can do an ls ~/.emacs.d/elpa which is where installed packages reside.

For those using this configuration to enhance their already exisitng environments, then read on and grab the pieces that suit you.

This configration explained

Preamble

All init.el files need to have:

(package-initialize)

Separate out custom settings

I like to keep my init.el file under source code control and hence try to keep my custom settings (via emacs built-in customization) separate. This allows me to use Emacs on many different platforms, keeping most of the platform-specific configuration in the custom.el file - like python settings.

;; Your customizations are stored in the custom.el file
;;    *DO THIS FIRST SO YOU CAN CUSTOMIZE PACKAGES BEFORE LOADING THEM*
(setq custom-file (expand-file-name "custom.el" user-emacs-directory))
(load custom-file)

The settings loaded here (if you start with the custom.el file here) will do all sorts of good things:

• Sets the package-archives list to include the melpa, gnu and org repositories.
• Turns on which-key mode. Handy for everybody but especially for newbies
• Turns on global-font-lock-mode for all nice colorizations
• Sets show-paren-mode so you can see your matching starting/ending parenthesis, brackets or braces.
• Sets electric-pari-mode to create pairs of parenthesis, quotes, … So when you type a ‘(‘, Emacs will insert the ‘)’ for you and leave the cursor under the close parenthesis.
• Sets up use-package to always ensure and defer loading (:ensure t :defer t) unless overridden.

Point to the repositories

The custom.el file sets up the package-archives variable to include the following repositories:

• melpa - http://melpa.org/packages/ - “stable” packages
• org - http://orgmode.org/elpa/ - the most up-to-date org repository
• gnu - http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/ - the default package library

Load up use-package

use-package is phenominal. It has everything buil-in including the ability to load the package on demand (:ensure). Just make sure that use-package is availble. In custom.el we tell use-package to always ensure and defer which is overridden for some packages with :demand.

;; Package paths are setup via custom.el
(package-refresh-contents)

(unless (package-installed-p 'use-package)
  (package-install 'use-package))
(require 'use-package)

Packages

Most of the packages are self explanatory. I’ll attempt to add documetation for anything that’s not “normal”.

Powerline

I’m a convert. I like powerline.

Omnisharp

I’m a C# developer these days. Omnisharp is the C# IDE I use. If you don’t have $(HOME)/repos/omnisharp-emacs on your system, then you won’t get this configuration. Directions for getting this working is in the comment.

Python configuratoin

You may need to define some of the python variables that point to executables if they are in strange places on your system - they certainly for me since I run Emacs from Cygwin64 on Windows 10 - ugh.

bits-o-configuration

my-ansi-term

Handy defun to create named ansi terminals. Handy for doing things where you want the <TAB> key to be passed for interpretation by the underlying program. For example, I use ansi-terms for psql (PostgresSQL prompt) and bash.

my-find-file-hook

As the name implies this gets run whenever a file is read in. It’s used to find files that start with the language: ”#!/usr/bin/sh” or ”#!/bin/python”. This lets me set the appropriate language if not specified by a file extension.

Key bindings

Completely a personal thing. These are my bindings for what they’re worth.

Retained history

This is a wicked cool (yup, from Boston) history retainer that allows you to do things like select a buffer that doesn’t exist but was read at some point during your Emacs’ history. VERY HANDY and many thanks to Sacha for the code.

Again these settings can be found in the custom file (savehist and history variables).

Suggestions/Comments

Are always welcome. Leave ‘em here or find me on twitter @Atman50.