A fast and robust Emacs setup

• Robust. Never crash after upgrading packages. Packages could be installed without network
• Support Windows. Find&Grep files on Windows with minimum setup
• Tested with Emacs 26.3, 27.2, 28.1 on Linux/Windows10/Cygwin/macOS/WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linux)
• Emacs vanilla key bindings and directory layout is respected
• Works in emacs-nox and PuTTY

Table of Content

Checklist

• Emacs 26.1 or higher version is required
• Please read FAQ to disable Vim key bindings
• Please read section “Key bindings” to learn key bindings
• Windows users had better download the version with dependencies bundled. For example, download “emacs-26.3-x86_64.zip” instead of “emacs-26.2-x86_64-no-deps.zip”
• Unstable packages from MELPA are invisible but stable packages from MELPA Stable are visible. Please modify variable melpa-include-packages in lisp/init-elpa.el to install unstable packages
• Other issues are covered in FAQ

Installation

Please remove ~/.emacs first. ~ means Home directory.

Most users need follow the section “Install in normal way”.

Section “Install stable version” is useful if and only if,

• You don’t have network access
• You have never used any command line program

Install in normal way

There are two ways to install this setup (I recommend the first way):

First way is to download latest setup and extract its content into ~/.emacs.d, OR run command cd ~; git clone https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git .emacs.d in shell.

Second way is to use stable setup, or run command cd ~; git clone https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git .emacs.d; cd .emacs.d; git reset --hard stable in shell.

By default, packages are installed automatically during Emacs startup.

Someone reported that package repository http://melpa.org is not responsive in China.

No worries. You could answer “YES” to the question “Switch to faster package repositories in China temporarily?” after firing Emacs. Please note after startup you could change variable package-archives in init-elpa.el to permanently switch to Chinese repositories.

Install stable version (OPTIONAL)

• Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/stable.zip
• Extract its content into empty directory ~/.emacs.d
• Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/stable.zip
• Extract the zip somewhere, say ~/projs/myelpa
• Make sure a file named archive-contents exists in ~/projs/myelpa
• Uncomment the line containing “myelpa” in lisp/init-elpa.el. Path ~/myelpa/ could be modified.
• Start Emacs now!

Now you are using local package repository ~/myelpa.

You can switch to online repositories like http://elpa.gnu.org or http://melpa.org by modifying lisp/init-elpa.el.

Install everything in one step (OPTIONAL)

Download content of https://github.com/redguardtoo/my-emacs.d-snapshot into ~/.emacs.d. That’s it.

It’s not recommended for daily usage because the third party packages are not optimized for latest Emacs.

Third party programs (OPTIONAL)

Install

Most command line programs can be installed through default package manager.

Default package manager could be:

• apt-cyg at Cygwin
• package manager of MSYS2
• homebrew at macOS
• any package manager at Linux (apt on Debian/Ubuntu, yum on Redhat, pacman on Arch, emerge on Gentoo …)

Some package managers allow you to install the program for current user. For example, python package manager pip has the option ”–user”.

List of programs

These programs are OPTIONAL.

Please ignore error message related to command line programs. For example, if aspell and hunspell are not installed, you can ignore all the flyspell error messages.

fortune-zh or fortune

Show ancient Chinese poem or quotes from random sources. Please note you can’t install fortune-zh through homebrew on macOS.

But there is a simple workaround:

• Install fortune
• Download fortune-zh code from https://github.com/debiancn/fortune-zh
• Extract code and run make in its folder
• copy data files and the script named fortune-zh into corresponding folders which fortune is using. You may need edit the file fortune-zh before copying

w3m (web browser)

• Required by emacs-w3m

You can insert (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'w3m) in ~/.gnus.el to force HTML mail be rendered by w3m instead of the default HTML rendering engine shr.

shr supports colored text while w3m not.

But my w3m based utilities can open video/audio/image with the help of w3m.

aspell or hunspell

• Required by flyspell

xmlstarlet or xml

• Required by lazyflymake for HTML syntax check.

identify from ImageMagick

• Required by org-mode to export org file to odt contain images

zip and unzip

• Required by org-mode to export org file to odt file

xsel or xclip

• Required by my clipboard command copy-to-x-clipboard and paste-from-x-clipboard under Linux

CMake

• Required by cpputils-cmake
• Please use out-of-source build tree when using CMake

Clang

• Required by cpputils-cmake, company-clang from company-mode
• If you use cpputils-cmake and cmake, cpputils-cmake will do all the setup for you. You need not read next item! But please spend a few minutes to learn the basics of cmake! There is a one minute step-by-step-guide in README of cpputils-cmake to teach you how to use cmake.
• If you use company-clang, add (setq company-clang-arguments '("-I/example1/dir" "-I/example2/dir")) into init.el

Pandoc

• Required by markdown-preview from markdown-mode

Universal Ctags (recommended) or Exuberant CTags

• It creates tags file for code navigation and code completion
• Required by many tags related packages (xref, counsel-etags, company-ctags from company-mode, etc)
• See How to use ctags in Emacs effectively

GNU Global

• Required by counsel-gtags and company-gtags from company-mode
• It creates index files for code navigation and auto-completion
• Please read GNU Global manual about environment variables GTAGSLIBPATH and MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX

LibreOffice

• Only its executable soffice is used for converting odt file into doc/pdf
• Conversion happens automatically when exporting org-mode to odt
• The conversion command is defined in variable org-export-odt-convert-processes

js-beautify

• Beautify javascript code
• Install pip through OS package manager, then pip install jsbeautifier

sdcv (console version of StarDict)

• Required by sdcv.e
• Run curl http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/repo/pkgs/stardict-dic/stardict-dictd_www.dict.org_wn-2.4.2.tar.bz2/f164dcb24b1084e1cfa2b1cb63d590e6/stardict-dictd_www.dict.org_wn-2.4.2.tar.bz2 | tar jx -C ~/.stardict/dic to install dictionary

ripgrep

• Optionally used by M-x counsel-etags-grep to search text in files
• Run curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh in shell to install Rust then cargo install ripgrep
• Tweak environment variable PATH so Emacs can find ripgrep

sbcl

• Required by SLIME: The Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs

ffmpeg

• Some dired commands use ffmpeg to process video/audio

LanguageTool

Grammar, Style and Spell Checker

• Download from https://languagetool.org/download/LanguageTool-stable.zip.
• Used by Langtool. Check its README for usage. My setup is just one liner (setq langtool-language-tool-jar "/path/to/languagetool-commandline.jar")
• Read the head of site-lisp/langtool/langtool.el for more customization because I patched it and added more features

shellcheck

• Check syntax of shell script
• Required by lazyflymake

mkvtoolnix

• Used by hydra in dired buffer

Tutorial (OPTIONAL)

Knowledge of Linux/Unix is required. At least you need know the meanings of “environment variable”, “shell”, “stdin”, “stdout”, “man”, “info”.

Tutorial

Please read this tutorial at least for once.

Step 1, learn basics

At minimum you need know how Emacs interacts with other command line programs,

Step 2, read official tutorial

Press C-h t in Emacs (“C” means Ctrl key, “M” means Alt key) to read bundled tutorial.

At minimum, you need learn:

• How to move cursor
• C-h v to describe variable
• C-h f to describe function
• C-h k to describe command key binding

Step 3, know org-mode basics

Org-mode is for notes-keeping and planning.

Please watch Carsten Dominik’s talk. It’s really simple. The only hot key to remember is Tab.

Step 4, start from a real world problem

You can visit EmacsWiki for the solution. Newbies can ask for help at http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/.

Step 5 (optional), improve your shell/cli skills

You could read free books/guides at The Linux Documentation Project.

Evil-mode tutorial

Required for vim user,

Methodology

See Master Emacs in One Year.

Usage

Original configuration from Emacs or third party packages are respected.

Quick start

On Windows, you need install Cygwin which provides command line programs to Emacs. Cygwin could be installed on any hard drive but it’s highly recommended don’t change it relative path to the root driver.

Install Ctags (Universal Ctags is better. Exuberant Ctags is fine). On Windows, you could install Ctags through Cygwin.

Run M-x counsel-etags-find-tag-at-point from counsel-etags to navigate code. It uses tags files created by ctags. Tags file will be automatically created/update when you start using counsel-etags.

Run M-x counsel-etags-grep to search text (grep) in project. Project root is automatically detected.

Run M-x find-file-in-project-by-selected from find-file-in-project to find file in project. Project root is automatically detected. You can also add one line setup in .emacs like (setq ffip-project-root "~/proj1/").

Code auto-completion works out of box by using tags file created by Ctags. You need run counsel-etags at least once to fire up Ctags. company-ctags from company-mode provides the candidates for auto completion. No manual setup is required.

Please grep in the directory ~/.emacs.d/lisp if you have any further questions on setup.

Better runtime performance

Why opening file is slow

Insert below code into ~/.custom.el, replace “/home/user1/your-file-path” with the file you want to open,

(defun profile-open-file ()
  (interactive)
  (profiler-start 'cpu)
  (find-file "/home/user1/your-file-path")
  (profiler-report)
  (profiler-stop))

Run M-x profile-open-file and read the report.

Key bindings

Don’t memorize any key binding. Try M-x any-command-in-emacs and hint for its key binding is displayed.

Most key bindings are defined in lisp/init-evil.el, a few key in lisp/init-hydra.el which uses Hydra.

Press C-c C-y anywhere to bring up default hydra menu.

The tutorials I recommended have enough information about commands.

Besides, ”How to be extremely efficient in Emacs” lists my frequently used commands.

Press kj to escape from evil-insert-state and everything else in Emacs. It’s much more efficient than ESC in Vim or C-g in Emacs. Search evil-escape in init-evil.el for details.

Computers with smaller memory

Make sure you have this line in early-init.el (Emacs 27.1+) or at the beginning of init.el (Emacs 26),

(setq my-computer-has-smaller-memory-p t)

Vim vs Emacs

I prefer default hotkeys&commands from EVIL and Emacs.

But sometimes a mixed style could be better for my personal workflow. See the function my-optimize-evil in init-evil.el.

You can insert (my-optimize-evil) into ~/.custom.el to enable it.

Backup packages

Run M-x elpamr-create-mirror-for-installed create a local repository from installed packages. See https://github.com/redguardtoo/elpa-mirror for more details.

Hardcore debug technique

This Emacs configuration is fast and robust.

So most tricky problems come from extra third party packages you installed.

Try Strace if you can’t resolve the issue by grepping the Emacs Lisp code.

Debug network request sent by Emacs,

strace -f -e trace=network -s 10000 -o ~/emacs-err.txt /usr/bin/emacs -nw

Debug system API call sent by Emacs,

strace -o ~/emacs-err.txt /usr/bin/emacs -nw

Spell check code

This configuration uses wucuo which is alternative of flyspell-mode and flyspell-prog-mode.

Wucuo is fast, reliable, and powerful. It’s better than any spell checking solutions of other text and IDE.

If you prefer your own spell check solution, insert below code to disable wucuo first,

(setq my-disable-wucuo t)

For further knowledge on spell checking, you could read my article and code in init-spelling.el.

Lock packages

Some packages are so important to my workflow that they are locked.

Those packages are placed at site-lisp/.

They will not be upgraded by package system.

Please make sure same package is not installed through elpa. Please check the content of directory “elpa/” in .emacs.d root.

How to install new packages?

I only use two package repositories,

• https://stable.melpa.org (holding stable packages)
• https://melpa.org (holding latest but unstable packages)

If a package named MY-PKG exists in the stable repository, you only need one line setup,

(require-package 'MY-PKG)

This line could be placed in lisp/init-elpa.el or ~/.custom.el.

You’d better place everything related to MY-PKG into ~/.custom.el so the main stream change won’t impact your own configuration.

If the package does not exist in the stable repository, modify melpa-include-packages in lisp/init-elpa.el first.

I encourage you to read init-elpa.el to understand how packages are managed if you are good at Emacs Lisp,

Git blame current line

Run vc-msg-show.

If you select a region inside current line, the correct commit which submits the selected snippet is displayed instead of the latest commit touch the whole line.

Save/Load windows layout

SPC s s or M-x wg-create-workgrou to save windows layout. SPC l l or M-x wg-open-workgroup to load windows layout.

Use this configuration as merge tool for Git

This configuration might be the most efficient and most powerful merge tool for VCS. Insert below configuration into ~/.gitconfig,

[mergetool.ediff]
# use git mergetool ediff to resolve conflicts
cmd = emacs -nw -Q --eval \"(setq startup-now t)\" -l \"~/.emacs.d/init.el\" --eval \"(progn (setq ediff-quit-hook 'kill-emacs) (if (file-readable-p \\\"$BASE\\\") (ediff-merge-files-with-ancestor \\\"$LOCAL\\\" \\\"$REMOTE\\\" \\\"$BASE\\\" nil \\\"$MERGED\\\") (ediff-merge-files \\\"$LOCAL\\\" \\\"$REMOTE\\\" nil \\\"$MERGED\\\")))\"

Then run git mergetool -t ediff to resolve conflicts.

Here is my ~/.gitconfig. You can use https://github.com/redguardtoo/test-git-mergetool to practice.

Default terminal shell

Run M-x shell. If you use Zsh instead of Bash, please modify init-term-mode.el.

You can customize my-term-program whose default value is /bin/bash. It’s used by ansi-term.

Override default setup

Place your setup in ~/.custom.el which is loaded after other “*.el”.

So you can use any functions defined in my emacs configuration.

Here is a sample to override keybindings defined in lisp/init-evil.el,

(with-eval-after-load 'evil
  (my-space-leader-def
    "ss" 'pwd
    "ll" 'pwd
    "pp" 'pwd))

Code navigation

It’s usable out of box if Ctags is installed.

To navigate, M-x counsel-etags-find-tag-at-point.

To enable code auto-completion, M-x counsel-etags-scan-code at least once.

Optionally, you can add (add-hook 'after-save-hook 'counsel-etags-virtual-update-tags) into your .emacs to automatically update tags file.

No further setup is required.

Code auto-completion

I assume you are using company-mode. In this setup, users can press digit key to select the candidate from company-mode. To disabled this feature, (setq my-company-select-by-number-p nil). Please see my-company-zero-key-for-filter for more tips.

C++ auto-completion doesn’t work?

There are many ways to scan the C++ source files. company-clang from company-mode and Clang is good at handling C++.

If you use clang to parse the C++ code:

• Make sure code is syntax correct
• assign reasonable value into company-clang-arguments

Here is sample setup:

(setq company-clang-arguments '("-I/home/myname/projs/test-cmake" "-I/home/myname/projs/test-cmake/inc"))

In “friendly” Visual C++, similar setup is required.

You can use other backends instead of clang. For example, you can use company-gtags and GNU Global instead. See Emacs as C++ IDE, easy way for details.

Auto-completion for other languages

It’s similar to C++ setup. Since GNU Global supports many popular languages, you can use company-gtags.

For languages GNU Global doesn’t support, you can fall back to company-ctags and Ctags. Ctags configuration file is ~/.ctags.

You can also complete line by M-x eacl-complete-line and complete multi-lines statement by M-x eacl-complete-multiline.

Color theme

Auto load classic color theme

Add below code to ~/.custom.el to load a random classic dark color theme during startup,

(setq my-enable-startup-color-theme-p t)

Preview color theme

Check https://emacsthemes.com/.

Write down the name of color theme (for example, molokai).

Setup color theme manually (recommended)

You can M-x counsel-load-theme to switch themes.

Or you can insert below code into end of ~/.custom.el or init.el,

;; Please note the color theme's name is "molokai"
(load-theme 'molokai t)

You can also run M-x random-color-theme to load random color theme.

Use color theme in terminal

Use 256 colors is just one CLI without any extra setup,

TERM=xterm-256color emacs -nw

True colors in terminal Emacs

Grep/Replace text in project

Many third party plugins bundled in this setup have already provided enough features. For example, if you use git, counsel-git-grep from package counsel/ivy works out of the box.

A generic grep program counsel-etags-grep is also provided. Since counsel-etags-grep is based on counsel/ivy, it also supports a magic called “multi-editing via Ivy”. You could read Nuclear weapon multi-editing via Ivy and Ag to get the idea.

Multi-edit workflow is optimized. After M-x counsel-etags-grep or pressing =,qq=, press C-c C-o C-x C-q to enable wgrep-mode. You can edit text (for example, delete lines) in wgrep-mode directly.

You can exclude multiple keywords using !keyword1 keyword2 in ivy.

Hydra/Swiper/Counsel/Ivy

I love all the packages from Oleh Krehel (AKA abo-abo). Every article from his blog is worth reading ten times.

You can input :pinyin1 pinyin2 !pinyin3 pinyin4 in ivy UI to search by Chinese Pinyin. The key point is to make sure the first character of input is “:”.

Set “auto-mode-alist”

The auto-mode-alist associates major modes with files.

For example, associate rjsx-mode file with extension “*.jsx”,

(push ("\\.jsx\\'" . rsjx-mode) auto-mode-alist)

Or you can use function my-add-auto-mode provided by this configuration,

(my-add-auto-mode 'rjsx-mode "\\.jsx\\'")

git-gutter

I use modified version of git-gutter for now until my pull request is merged into official repository.

You can set git-gutter:exp-to-create-diff to make git gutter support other VCS (Perforce, for example),

(setq git-gutter:exp-to-create-diff
      (shell-command-to-string (format "p4 diff -du -db %s"
                                       (file-relative-name buffer-file-name))))

Please note git-gutter assumes the cli program diff is added into environment variable PATH. You might need install it through MSYS2 or Cygwin on Windows.

Setup fonts in GUI Emacs

Non-Chinese can use unicode-fonts.

Chinese can use cnfonts.

They are not included in this setup. You need install them manually.

Synchronize setup with Git

Synchronize from my stable setup:

git pull https://[email protected]/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git stable

Or latest setup:

git pull https://[email protected]/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git

You can revert commit:

# always start from the latest related commit
git revert commit-2014-12-01
git revert commit-2014-11-01

Indentation

Learn basics. Then use my solution.

Editing Lisp

Please note paredit-mode is enabled when editing Lisp. Search “paredit cheat sheet” to learn its key bindings.

Use smart-mode-line or powerline?

Comment out (require 'init-modeline) in init.el at first.

Key bindings don’t work?

Other desktop applications may intercept the key bindings. For example, it’s reported QQ on windows 8 can intercept “M-x”.

Org-mode

Press M-x org-version, then read online manual to set up.

For example, org-capture requires manual setup.

Run M-x org-open-at-point to open link under cursor. Http link will be opened by emacs-w3m. C-u M-x org-open-at-point uses the external browser specified by browse-url-generic-program whose value could be /usr/bin/firefox.

macOS user?

Please replace legacy Emacs 22 and ctags with the new versions.

The easiest way is change Environment variable PATH.

Customize global variables

Some variables are set by this configuration so you can’t M-x customize to modify them.

Here are the steps to set these variables:

• Find the variable description by M-x customize. For example, if the description of a variable is “Company Clang Insert Arguments”, then the variable name is company-clang-insert-argument
• Find the variable company-clang-insert-argument in lisp/init-company.el and change its value

BTW, please read my code comment first before changing my code.

Open/Save files with Counsel/Ivy

Keep pressing C-M-j to ignore candidates and open/save files using current input.

You can also press M-o to apply other action on selected file. See https://oremacs.com/2015/07/23/ivy-multiaction/ for details.

Windows

I strongly suggest Cygwin Emacs.

If you use Windows Emacs, you need help Emacs to find third party command line programs from Cygwin. So you’d better add C:\Cygwin64\bin to environment variable PATH.

Most command line programs are originally developed for macOS and Linux. They can only handle UTF-8 encoded text. When grepping text or searching file, the Windows Emacs need run the command line programs in Command Prompt which only uses UTF-16 encoded text. So you might need Using UTF-8 Encoding (CHCP 65001) in Command Prompt / Windows Powershell (Windows 10) if Emacs need pass Non-ASCII text to external command line programs.

Below Emacs commands do not require external command line programs, so they works out of box on Windows,

• `M-x swiper`
• `M-x ffip-lisp-find-file-in-project`
• `M-x find-lisp-find-dired`
• `M-x find-by-pinyin-dired`
• `M-x find-by-pinyin-in-project-dired`

You can set environment variables in PowerShell, like,

setx var_name "var_value"

Environment variable HOME points to the directory C:\Users\<username> on Windows by default. You need copy the folder .emacs.d into that directory. Or you can change the value of HOME.

I use below cli to set the variable HOME to “c:\cygwin\home\cb”,

setx HOME "c:\cygwin\home\cb"

Yasnippet

• Instead of M-x yas-expand or pressing TAB key, you can press M-j instead.
• Yasnippet works out of box. But you can M-x my-yas-reload-all to force Yasnippet compile all the snippets. If you run my-yas-reload-all once, you always need run it when new snippets is added. The purpose of my-yas-reload-all is to make Emacs start up faster.
• You can add your snippets into snippets/.
• Run grep -rns --exclude‘.yas*’ ‘key:’ *= in snippets/ to see my own snippets

Non-English users

Locale must be UTF-8 compatible. For example, as I type locale in shell, I got the output zh_CN.UTF-8.

Behind corporate firewall

Run below command in shell:

http_proxy=http://yourname:[email protected]:8080 emacs -nw

Network is blocked

Try https://github.com/XX-net/XX-Net. Run command http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:8087 emacs -nw in shell after starting XX-Net.

Email

If you use Gnus for email, check init-gnus.el and read my Gnus tutorial.

Cannot download packages?

Some package cannot be downloaded automatically because of network problem.

Run M-x package-refresh-content, restart Emacs, reinstall package.

Use packages on GNU ELPA

By default, packages from GNU ELPA are NOT available. Search the line “uncomment below line if you need use GNU ELPA” in init-elpa.el if you want to access GNU ELPA.

For example, flycheck requires packages from GNU ELPA.

Use flycheck to syntax check code

If you prefer flycheck instead the default syntax check solution lazyflymake built into this configuration.

Install and set up flycheck and insert below code to disable lazyflymake,

(setq my-disable-lazyflymake t)

Disable Vim key bindings

By default EVIL (Vim emulation in Emacs) is used. Comment out line containing (require 'init-evil) in init.el to unload it.

Evil setup

It’s defined in lisp/init-evil.el. Press C-z to switch between Emacs and Vim key bindings.

You could visit its website to download its free ebook there.

You can set my-initial-evil-state-setup to customize the initial evil state per major mode,

;; `diff-mode' uses Emacs original key bindings
(push '(diff-mode . emacs) my-initial-evil-state-setup)
;; `ivy-occur-grep-mode' initial state is evil normal state. Vim key bindings are used.
(push '(ivy-occur-grep-mode . normal) my-initial-evil-state-setup)

Chinese Input Method Editor

Please note pyim is already built into this setup. You need not install it through ELPA.

Run M-x toggle-input-method to toggle input method pyim.

Use Pinyin

The default dictionary for pinyin might not be big enough. So you need install bigger dictionaries.

Dictionaries with “.pyim” extension under the directory ~/.eim/ are automatically loaded.

Please run curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/redguardtoo/pyim-tsinghua-dict/master/pyim-tsinghua-dict.pyim > ~/.eim/pyim-tsinghua-dict.pyim to install extra dictionaries.

The default pinyin scheme is quanpin but you can insert below code into ~/.custom.el to switch to a different pinyin scheme,

(with-eval-after-load 'pyim
  (setq pyim-default-scheme 'xiaohe-shuangpin))

Use Wubi

Dictionary for wubi is already installed. Please insert below code into ~/.custom.el to enable wubi dictionary and use wubi scheme,

(setq my-pyim-enable-wubi-dict t)
(with-eval-after-load 'pyim
  (setq pyim-default-scheme 'wubi))

Install multiple versions of Emacs

Run below commands to install Emacs 26.3 into the directory ~/myemacs/26.3:

mkdir -p ~/tmp;
curl http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-26.3.tar.gz | tar xvz -C ~/tmp/emacs-26.3
cd ~/tmp/emacs-26.3;
mkdir -p ~/myemacs/26.3;
rm -rf ~/myemacs/26.3/*;
./configure --prefix=~/myemacs/26.3 --without-x --without-dbus --without-sound && make && make install

Change Time Locale

Insert below code into ~/.emacs or ~/.custom.el,

;; Use en_US locale to format time.
;; if not set, the OS locale is used.
(setq system-time-locale "C")

Directory structure

init.el is the main file. It includes other *.el files.

lisp/init-elpa.el defines what packages will be installed from MELPA.

Packages are installed into the directory elpa/.

I also manually download and extract some packages into site-lisp/. Packages in site-lisp/ are not visible to the package manager.

My own snippets is at snippets/.

The git hooks is placed in githooks directory.

Other directories don’t matter.

Run the unit test before git commit

On macOS/Linux/Cygwin, run make githooks to install hooks into .git/hooks.

Then unit test is run automatically before git commit.

Python environment

We use Elpy (Emacs Python Development Environment). See its official documentation on its usage.

The flag elpy-disable-backend-error-display is set to nil so you can easily report any error to its developers.

If you don’t use Elpy, please set this flag to t.

To enable the virtual environment created by Elpy as its official guide has suggested, you can add below code into ~/.custom.el,

(with-eval-after-load 'elpy
  (let* ((venv-dir "~/.emacs.d/elpy/rpc-venv"))
    (when (and (file-exists-p venv-dir)
               (executable-find pyvenv-virtualenvwrapper-python))
      (pyvenv-activate venv-dir))))

After activating the virtual environment created by Elpy, you could also backup its required packages,

source ~/.emacs.d/elpy/rpc-venv/bin/activate && pip freeze > elpy-requirements.txt && deactivate

Then restore the packages,

source ~/.emacs.d/elpy/rpc-venv/bin/activate && pip install -r elpy-requirements.txt && deactivate

My elpy-requirements.txt (Python 3.9.1),

appdirs==1.4.4
autopep8==1.5.4
black==20.8b1
click==7.1.2
flake8==3.8.4
jedi==0.18.0
mccabe==0.6.1
mypy-extensions==0.4.3
parso==0.8.1
pathspec==0.8.1
pycodestyle==2.6.0
pyflakes==2.2.0
regex==2020.11.13
rope==0.18.0
toml==0.10.2
typed-ast==1.4.1
typing-extensions==3.7.4.3
yapf==0.30.0

After above setup, you can run M-x elpy-config to double check elpy status.

You might want to modify include-system-site-packages in ~/.emacs.d/elpy/rpc-venv/pyvenv.cfg

Set up lsp-mode

You could insert below code into ~/.custom.el,

(with-eval-after-load 'lsp-mode
  ;; enable log only for debug
  (setq lsp-log-io nil)
  ;; use `evil-matchit' instead
  (setq lsp-enable-folding nil)
  ;; no real time syntax check
  (setq lsp-diagnostic-package :none)
  ;; handle yasnippet by myself
  (setq lsp-enable-snippet nil)
  ;; turn off for better performance
  (setq lsp-enable-symbol-highlighting nil)
  ;; use find-fine-in-project instead
  (setq lsp-enable-links nil)
  ;; auto restart lsp
  (setq lsp-restart 'auto-restart)
  ;; don't watch 3rd party javascript libraries
  (push "[/\\\\][^/\\\\]*\\.\\(json\\|html\\|jade\\)$" lsp-file-watch-ignored)
  ;; don't ping LSP language server too frequently
  (defvar lsp-on-touch-time 0)
  (defun my-lsp-on-change-hack (orig-fun &rest args)
    ;; do NOT run `lsp-on-change' too frequently
    (when (> (- (float-time (current-time))
                lsp-on-touch-time) 120) ;; 2 mins
      (setq lsp-on-touch-time (float-time (current-time)))
      (apply orig-fun args)))
  (advice-add 'lsp-on-change :around #'my-lsp-on-change-hack))

Then run M-x lsp to start lsp client and server. Check https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode on how to install lsp server.

Enable typewriter sounds when typing

Run M-x my-toggle-typewriter. Please check bundled typewriter-mode.el for further setup.

pdf-tools

Check its official documentation.

Here is my setup in ~/.custom.el,

;; @see https://github.com/vedang/pdf-tools/
;; Don't bother Windows
(when (and (display-graphic-p) (or *linux* *is-a-mac*))
  (my-run-with-idle-timer
   2
   (lambda ()
     (when *is-a-mac*
       (setenv "PKG_CONFIG_PATH" "/usr/local/Cellar/zlib/1.2.8/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/X11/lib/pkgconfig"))
     (pdf-loader-install))))

Support legacy Emacs versions

Emacs 25

Version 3.2 is the last version to support Emacs 25

Please use https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/3.1.zip and https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/3.1.zip.

Emacs 24.4 and 24.5

Version 2.9 is the last version to support Emacs 24.4+

Please use https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/2.9.zip and https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/2.9.zip.

Emacs 24.3

Version 2.6 is the last version to support Emacs 24.3.

Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/2.6.zip and https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/2.6.zip and you are good to go.

Emacs 23

Version 1.2 of this setup is the last version to support Emacs v23.

Here are the steps to use that setup:

• Never turn off any bundled mode if it’s on by default. Future version of Emacs may assume it’s on. Tweak its flag in mode hook instead!
• Git skills are extremely useful. Please read the chapters “Git Basics”, “Git Branching”, “Git Tools” from Pro Git
• You can run optimize-emacs-startup to compile “*.el” under lisp/
• Many advanced features in this configuration is only enabled in my personal ~/.custom.el. Grep defvar my-.* in ~/.emacs.d/lisp/ to find them. You can start from init-company.el and init-spelling.el.

Report bug

Please check EmacsWiki and my FAQ first.

If you still can’t resolve the issue,

• Restart Emacs with option --debug-init in shell
• Run M-x toggle-debug-on-error in Emacs
• Reproduce the issue and send me the error message

The full command line to start Emacs is emacs -nw --debug-init.

If you use Emacs for Mac OS X, the command line is /Application/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw --debug-init.

Send error messages to the original developer if it’s third party package’s problem.

If you are sure it’s this my bug, file report at https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d. Don’t email me!

Bug report need include environment details.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.