250 lines
8 KiB
Markdown
250 lines
8 KiB
Markdown
# Emacs Prelude
|
|
|
|
## Prelude
|
|
|
|
Emacs is probably the best text editor in the world. However, the
|
|
process of coming up with a useful Emacs configuration is long and
|
|
difficult. It's this process that separates you from truly taking
|
|
advantage of Emacs's power. I like to refer to this process as the
|
|
**Prelude**. The **Emacs Prelude** has the goal to ease the initial
|
|
Emacs setup process and to provide you with a much more powerful and
|
|
productive experience than that you get out of the box. By using **Emacs
|
|
Prelude** you're basically getting a "Get me out of the Prelude, I
|
|
just want to use Emacs" card.
|
|
|
|
Emacs Prelude is compatible **ONLY with GNU Emacs 24**. While Emacs 24
|
|
is not yet officially released it's a rock solid piece of software
|
|
more than suitable for everyday work. There is no good excuse not to
|
|
use Emacs 24!
|
|
|
|
Emacs Prelude is not the only reusable Emacs config out there - the
|
|
Emacs Starter Kit is fairly popular and there is the Emacs Dev Kit
|
|
that I used to maintain. I've decided to abandon the Emacs Dev Kit for
|
|
the Emacs Prelude for two reasons - the unfortunate choice a name (too
|
|
similar to Emacs Starter Kit) and the totally new philosophy I have in
|
|
store for the Prelude (easy to update, easy to personalize, easy to
|
|
extend, highly modular, highly comprehensible).
|
|
|
|
## Getting Emacs 24
|
|
|
|
Obviously to use the Emacs Prelude you have to install Emacs 24
|
|
first. Here's a few tips on doing so:
|
|
|
|
### OS X
|
|
|
|
Obtaining Emacs 24 on OS X is really simple. There are two popular
|
|
ways to do it. The first is to simply download a pretest (or a nightly
|
|
build) from [Emacs for OSX](http://emacsformacosx.com). My personal
|
|
recommendation would be to get the latest pretest (which is ironically
|
|
the first pretest as well) from
|
|
[here](http://emacsformacosx.com/emacs-builds/Emacs-pretest-24.0.90-universal-10.6.7.dmg).
|
|
|
|
That was really easy, right?
|
|
|
|
The second easy way to obtain Emacs 24 is via
|
|
[homebrew](http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/). Just type the following
|
|
incantation in your shell and you're done:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
$ brew install emacs --cocoa --use-git-head --HEAD
|
|
$ cp -r /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/HEAD/Emacs.app /Applications/
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
The second step is optional, but it's recommended if you like to start
|
|
Emacs from the launchpad or from Spotlight. Personally I prefer to
|
|
start Emacs in daemon mode (`emacs --daemon`), so that I could share a
|
|
single Emacs instance between several Emacs clients (`emacsclient
|
|
-c/t`).
|
|
|
|
That's all folk! You may now proceed to the configuration section.
|
|
|
|
### Linux
|
|
|
|
Given that Linux is more or less the home os of Emacs it presents us
|
|
with the most installation options. Of course, we can build Emacs from
|
|
[source](https://github.com/emacsmirror/emacs) on every distribution
|
|
out there, but I rarely bother to do so. Using the distribution's
|
|
package manager is a better idea for many reasons - you don't need to
|
|
install a build chain and lots of dev libraries, you get updated
|
|
versions when they are released and you get automated dependency
|
|
manager, just to name a few.
|
|
|
|
That said, few distributions include in their primary repositories
|
|
builds of Emacs 24. Luckily there are some unofficial repos that come
|
|
to the rescue.
|
|
|
|
Debian/Ubuntu users should look no further than the amazing
|
|
[emacs-snapshot APT repo](http://emacs.naquadah.org/). You'll find
|
|
installation instructions there for all the relevant Debian and Ubuntu
|
|
versions out there. High quality, highly recommended builds!
|
|
|
|
Gentoo users have even less to do, since Emacs 24 can be obtained via
|
|
the emacs-vcs package in portage, as noted in the official
|
|
[Emacs on Gentoo page](http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/emacs/emacs.xml).
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find prebuilt Emacs 24 packages for any
|
|
of the RPM distros (Fedora, SUSE, Mandriva, etc). Since, I'm Debian
|
|
user I have to admit that I didn't look that far, but the source
|
|
installation is not particularly hard and is always an option.
|
|
|
|
### Windows
|
|
|
|
There are several ways to obtain precompiled Emacs 24 binaries if
|
|
you're a Windows users. The most popular are
|
|
[EmacsW32](http://ourcomments.org/cgi-bin/emacsw32-dl-latest.pl),
|
|
[Emacs for Windows](http://code.google.com/p/emacs-for-windows/) and
|
|
of course the official
|
|
[Emacs Windows builds](http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/). I've
|
|
,personally, never used any builds other than the official ones. The
|
|
unofficial builds usually include installers and various patches that
|
|
might be of use to some users.
|
|
|
|
Since I rarely use Windows I cannot give you any more advice on the
|
|
choice of a binary vendor.
|
|
|
|
## Enhanced programming experience
|
|
|
|
The following list will be expanded greatly in the future.
|
|
|
|
### Additional programming languages support
|
|
|
|
* Clojure
|
|
* CoffeeScript
|
|
* Groovy
|
|
* Haskell
|
|
|
|
### Additional markup languages support
|
|
|
|
* Markdown
|
|
* Sass
|
|
* Haml
|
|
* Yaml
|
|
* LaTeX
|
|
|
|
### Enhanced configuration
|
|
|
|
* C
|
|
* Clojure
|
|
* CoffeeScript
|
|
* Common Lisp
|
|
* ERC
|
|
* JavaScript
|
|
* Python
|
|
* Ruby
|
|
* Scheme
|
|
* XML
|
|
|
|
## Enhanced productivity
|
|
|
|
* Projectile
|
|
* yasnippet
|
|
|
|
## Bundled packages
|
|
|
|
* auctex (LaTeX editing)
|
|
* clojure-mode
|
|
* coffee-mode
|
|
* deft (note taking)
|
|
* gist (snippet sharing on github.com)
|
|
* groovy-mode
|
|
* haml-mode
|
|
* haskell-mode
|
|
* magit (enhanced git integration)
|
|
* markdown-mode
|
|
* paredit
|
|
* projectile (project management mode)
|
|
* python.el (improved Python mode)
|
|
* sass-mode
|
|
* scss-mode
|
|
* yaml-mode
|
|
* yari (ri frontend)
|
|
* yasnippet
|
|
|
|
## Installation
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
$ git clone git://github.com/bbatsov/emacs-prelude.git path/to/local/repo
|
|
$ ln -s path/to/local/repo ~/.emacs.d
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
You'd do well to replace `~/.emacs.d` with the value of
|
|
`user-emacs-directory` for your OS. You can check the value by doing
|
|
`C-h v user-emacs-directory` inside Emacs.
|
|
|
|
You might have to install the `make` and `makeinfo` packages if you
|
|
don't have them already, since the build of some packages obtained via
|
|
`el-get` might require them.
|
|
|
|
## Running
|
|
|
|
Nothing fancy here. Just start Emacs as usual. Personally I run Emacs
|
|
in daemon mode:
|
|
|
|
`$ emacs --daemon`
|
|
|
|
Afterwards I connect to the server with either a terminal or a GUI
|
|
client like this:
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
$ emacsclient -t
|
|
$ emacsclient -c
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Color Themes
|
|
|
|
Emacs 24 ships with a new theming facility that effectively renders
|
|
the old color-theme package obsolete. Emacs 24 provides a dozen of
|
|
built-in themes you can use out-of-the-box by invoking the `M-x
|
|
load-theme` command. Emacs Prelude adds two more popular themes to the
|
|
mix - zenburn and solarized (I'm the maintainer of the Emacs ports
|
|
included).
|
|
|
|
Zenburn is the default color theme in Prelude, but you can change it
|
|
at your discretion. Why Zenburn? I (and lots of hackers around the
|
|
world) find it pretty neat for some reason. Personally I find the
|
|
default theme pretty tiresome for the eyes, that's why I took that
|
|
"controversial" decision to replace it. You can, of course, easily go
|
|
back to the default (or select another theme entirely).
|
|
|
|
## Personalizing
|
|
|
|
If you'd like to change some of the setting in Prelude (or simply add
|
|
more) the proper way to do so would be to create Emacs Lisp files
|
|
under the **personal** directory in `prelude-dir`. They will be loaded
|
|
automatically be Prelude on startup.
|
|
|
|
Avoid modifying the Prelude config itself - this will make it hard for
|
|
you to receive automatic updates in the future.
|
|
|
|
## Caveats & Pitfalls
|
|
|
|
### No arrow navigation in editor buffers
|
|
|
|
This is not a bug - it's a feature! I firmly believe that the one true
|
|
way to use Emacs is by using it the way it was intended to be used (as
|
|
far as navigation is concerned at least). That's why I've disabled all
|
|
movement commands with arrows - to prevent you from being tempted to
|
|
use them.
|
|
|
|
### Windows compatibility
|
|
|
|
While everything in Prelude should work fine in Windows I test it only
|
|
with Linux & OSX so there are Windows related problems from time to
|
|
time. This situation will probably improve over time.
|
|
|
|
## Known issues
|
|
|
|
Check out the project's issue list for that. :-)
|
|
|
|
## Bugs & Improvements
|
|
|
|
Bug reports and suggestions for improvements are always
|
|
welcome. github pull requests are even better! :-)
|
|
|
|
I'd like to include a nice variety of Emacs 24 themes into Prelude -
|
|
so if you've developed (or simply found) one - give me a shout and
|
|
I'll take a look at it.
|
|
|
|
Cheers,
|
|
Bozhidar
|
|
|