A basic Emacs setup

Table of Contents

• Why Emacs
• About this configuration
• Install
  • Makefile
  • Fetch submodule manually

Why Emacs

Emacs changes how you think about programming.

Emacs is totally introspectable. You can always find out ‘what code runs when I press this button?’.

Emacs is an incremental programming environment. There’s no edit-compile-run cycle. There isn’t even an edit-run cycle. You can execute snippets of code and gradually turn them into a finished project. There’s no distinction between your editor and your interpreter.

Emacs is a mutable environment. You can set variables, tweak functions with advice, or redefine entire functions. Nothing is off-limits.

Emacs provides functionality without applications. Rather than separate applications, functionality is all integrated into your Emacs instance. Amazingly, this works. Ever wanted to use the same snippet tool for writing C++ classes as well as emails?

Emacs is full of incredible software concepts that haven’t hit the mainstream yet. For example:

• Many platforms have a single item clipboard. Emacs has an infinite clipboard.
• If you undo a change, and then continue editing, you can’t redo the original change. Emacs allows undoing to any historical state, even allowing tree-based exploration of history.
• Emacs supports a reverse variable search: you can find variables with a given value.
• You can perform structural editing of code, allowing you to make changes without breaking syntax. This works for lisps (paredit) and non-lisps (smartparens).
• Many applications use a modal GUI: for example, you can’t do other edits during a find-and-replace operation. Emacs provides recursive editing that allow you to suspend what you’re currently doing, perform other edits, then continue the original task.

Emacs has a documentation culture. Emacs includes a usage manual, a lisp programming manual, pervasive docstrings and even an interactive tutorial.

Emacs has a broad ecosystem. If you want to edit code in a niche language, there’s probably an Emacs package for it.

Emacs doesn’t have a monopoly on good ideas, and there are other great tools out there. Nonetheless, we believe the Emacs learning curve pays off.

This Why Emacs section credits to Remacs.

About this configuration

This configuration is about Emacs + Evil, but Emacs vanilla key bindings are respected.

Install

Clone this repository to either ~/.emacs.d or for testing purposes to any other location.

The following description assumes that you clone this repo to ~/.emacs.d. If you clone to other location, modify the corresponding path.

git clone https://github.com/dalugm/emacs.d.git ~/.emacs.d

Makefile

cd ~/.emacs.d
make bootstrap-borg
make help                       # check help
make bootstrap

Fetch submodule manually

cd ~/.emacs.d
git submodule update --init --recursive
git submodule foreach git reset --hard
git submodule foreach git checkout master