Spacemacs: emacs user’s first impression

Kazuki Yoshida

March 20, 2017

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Who am I?

I Doctoral student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of PublicHealth (Epidemiology & Biostatistics).

I Main use of emacs in R programming and LATEX(5 years?).

I Recently started using org-mode.

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What is spacemacs?

I A community-driven Emacs distribution: "The best editoris neither Emacs nor Vim, it’s Emacs and Vim!"

I i.e., spacemacs is a bunch of emacs configuration filescontributed by the community that transforms the vanillaemacs to a "ready-to-use" system.

I spacemacs is NOT a fork of emacs, it runs on the latestGNU Emacs.

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How to install spacemacs

I Nice looking website at http://spacemacs.org/

I Github repo athttps://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs

I Quick start athttp://spacemacs.org/doc/QUICK_START.html

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Installation: Wait, replacing .emacs.d!?

## Default installation methodgit clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.d

I The default installation methods assumes that you usespacemacs as a drop-in replacement.

I This is unlikely to be what existing emacs users want.

I Recommendation is to back up the existing .emacs.dand move it out of the way. It’s not ideal.

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Run parallel instances of spacemacs and emacs

I Clone the develop branch to ~/.spacemacs.d.

git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs -b develop ~/.spacemacs.d

I Create an empty ~/.spacemacs file. This will be theuser-specific configuration file. This seems to avoidmessing with the git repo.

touch ~/.spacemacs

I These files are ignored by the regular emacs without anadditional trick.

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~/.emacs trick

I In the emacs startup process, ~/.emacs has the highestpriority. (51.4.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File)

I We can conditionally load ~/*/init.el using ~/.emacs.

I I used the name of the executable to use different folder.My .emacs (link; or find kaz-yos on Gist)

I Inspired by Running spacemacs alongside regular emacson emacs stack exchange.

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First start upI Open Spacemacs.app if you are doing my trick.I You may experience this certificate issue. Just press A as

many times as it asks.

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Default packagesI A lot of default packages are installed automatically.

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Fresh spacemacsI Fresh spacemacs looks pretty good already

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SPC key rules!I As the name suggests, SPC serves as a prefix.

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Some key bindingsI SPC prefix to grouped commands. guide-key.el will

guide you.I SPC SPC corresponds to M-x, but with the helm.el

backend.I SPC h help related prefix.

I SPC h l help for layers available.I SPC h T Evil tutor

I SPC f file related prefix.I SPC f f for helm-find-files.I SPC f e d for editing the ~/.spacemacs configuration

file.I SPC b buffer related prefix.

I SPC b b helm-mini for choosing a buffer.I SPC b d kill-this-buffer

I SPC a application related prefix.I SPC a d dired (C-RET to decide)

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What is a layer?I A layer can be considered as a meta-package that

organizes multiple individual packages nicely.I SPC h l will list 150 available layers that are available

currently.I http://spacemacs.org/layers/LAYERS.html

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How a layer is implementedI "A configuration layer is a directory containing at least a

packages.el file which defines and configures packages tobe downloaded from Emacs package repositories using thepackage.el built-in feature of Emacs."

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Configuring spacemacs

I ~/.spacemacs is for individual configuration.I SPC SPC dotspacemacs/install overwrites~/.spacemacs with the template.

I SPC f e d (file/emacs/dotfile) opens this file for editing.

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Layer configurationI Put names of layers you want in thedotspacemacs-configuration-layers list.

I SPC SPCdotspacemacs/sync-configuration-layers toactivate the layer.

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Layer example: gitI If the git layer is added and the config file is sync’ed, SPCg prefix is added.

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Changing defaults

I Default settings are in the dotspacemacs/init part of~/.spacemacs.

I The most important decision here isdotspacemacs-editing-style.

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User configuration beyond layersI User configuration should be in these parts of~/.spacemacs.

I dotspacemacs/user-init loads before layers.I dotspacemacs/user-config loads after layers.

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Migrating existing configurationI A proper way to incorporate your pre-existing emacs

configuration is to create a custom layer. But startingfrom scratch may be a better way considering the wayspacemacs differs.

I https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4niswu/migrating_from_emacs_to_spacemacs/

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Summary

I Spacemacs is a distribution of emacs with nice defaultsand sophisticated layer-based configuration.

I If someone is coming to emacs for the first time orexisting Evil mode user, spacemacs is highlyrecommended.

I For someone with highly customized emacs configuration,the transition appears daunting.

I I haven’t made the switch (yet?).

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