My Personal Emacs Configuration

This is my personal Emacs configuration. This is the second repository I clone -- after my dotfiles -- when settling in on a new computer . I'm using package.el and Emacs 24 themes, so this requires at least Emacs 24.4!

To use it, clone it into your home directory, or at least wherever Emacs thinks your home directory is. Move your existing .emacs file out of the way, since it being there prevents Emacs from using the init.el in this repository. I do still use a .emacs file for system-specific configuration, but I put this at the top,

(let ((init "~/.emacs.d/init.elc"))
  (if (file-exists-p init)
      (load-file init)
    (load-file (substring init 0 -1))))

If you did everything right Emacs should simply launch with no errors. You will be greeted with a featureless, empty gray box awaiting your instructions.

Features

I try to keep my Emacs configuration tight and tidy. I generally spend somewhere between 30-60 hours a week in front of Emacs, so this configuration has been carefully pieced together and every line is important.

Whitespace

There's a customized hook for whitespace-cleanup in before-save-hook. It will remove all trailing whitespace, and, because I'm so picky, also convert all tabs to spaces just before saving a buffer. To disable this on a per-buffer basis -- for example, to precisely edit a sloppily-spaced file -- run toggle-whitespace-cleanup.

See whitespace-cleanup.el for all the details.

Ido

Something experienced Emacs users may notice at first is that I make heavy use of ido-mode. It's turned on with flex matching, I've got smex loaded to complete M-x commands, and I use it for picking Java documentation. It's a wonderful feature and every Emacs user should be using it.

Magit

To interact with Git repositories, I use Magit (pronounced like "magic"). You can run it at any time with C-x g. As the manual points out, Magit is not a complete interface for Git, nor should it be. It covers 95% of my Git use, with the other 5% directly with Git on the command line. Magit is one of the main reasons I use Git.

Web Server

This configuration includes a built-in web server, written by me. You can launch it with httpd-start and stop it with httpd-stop. It will serve files from the directory at httpd-root and log messages in s-expression form to the *httpd* buffer.

Skewer

The most important use of the web server is for skewer-mode. I run its associated userscript in my browser allowing me to, at any time on any page, attach Emacs to a webpage. Once attached to Emacs I can fully interact with the browser's JavaScript runtime through a JavaScript REPL (skewer-repl) and live expression evaluation in JavaScript buffers, very similar to the various lisp interaction modes. It can also do live "evaluation" of CSS (skewer-css-mode) and HTML (skewer-html-mode).

Lisp: Paredit and Parenface

Paredit is a very significant behavioral change for Lisp modes. It enforces parenthesis balance and provides all sorts of shortcuts for manipulating entire s-expressions at once. It may feel annoying at first, but it quickly becomes indispensable. Keep looking at the cheatsheet until you've got the hang of it.

I also have parenface configured, which darkens the parenthesis in Lisp modes. It makes Lisp code all the more pleasing to look at -- reading Lisp is all about indentation, not parenthesis. It won't be enabled in the *scratch* buffer automatically because that buffer gets set up before parenface does.