Background and Overview

After using emacs for any period of time, one begins to develop a rather extensive emacs configuration. Emacs comes with very little default configuration and large number of configuration possibilities. Because writers, programmers, and researchers of all persuasions and backgrounds use emacs for a larger array of tasks and work profiles, the need for customization is often quite high. n Rather than have a massive emacs configuration with thousands of lines, I've broken the configuration into a number of files that are easier to manage, easier to troubleshoot, and easier to make sense of. These files are then linked together and loaded using emacs' native require function. This document explains that organizational principal and provides the code needed to duplicate my configuration.

I store all of my emacs configuration in a folder that I will refer to as ~/emacs/, in actuality this is a sub-folder within a git repository that I use to store all of my configuration folders, and you should modify this location to suit your own needs. Additionally, I have the habit of prepending the characters tycho- to every function and emacs file name that are my own writing. This namespace trick helps keep my customization separate from emacs' own functions or the functions of loaded packages and prevents unintended consequences in most cases. You might want to consider a similar practice.

Configuring .emacs

My .emacs file is really a symbolic link to the ~/emacs/config/$HOSTNAME.el file. This allows the contents of .emacs to be in version control and if you have your emacs configuration on multiple machines to use the same basic configuration on multiple machines with whatever machine specific configuration you require. To create this symlink, issue the following command:

ln -s ~/emacs/config/$HOSTNAME.el ~/.emacs

Make sure that all required files and directories exist. My .emacs file is, regardless of it's actual location, is very minimal because the meat of the configuration is in ~/emacs/tycho-init.el. Take the following skeleton for ~/.emacs:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;
;; Startup and Behavior Controls
;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

(setq load-path (cons "~/emacs" load-path))

(setq custom-file "~/emacs/custom.el")
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/emacs/snippet/")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/slime/")

(require 'tycho-display)

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;
;; Machine Specific Configuration Section
;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

(tycho-font-medium)
(setq bookmark-default-file "~/garen/emacs/bookmarks/arendt"
      w3m-session-file "~/garen/emacs/bookmarks/w3m-session-arendt"
      bookmark-save-flag 1)

(if (file-directory-p "~/garen/emacs/backup")
    (setq backup-directory-alist '(("." . "~/garen/emacs/backup")))
  (message "Directory does not exist: ~/garen/emacs/backup"))

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;
;; Load the real init
;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

(require 'tycho-init)

(menu-bar-mode -1)

The first seq defines the load path. Like other configuration paths, this is the directory that emacs will look for files to load when you use require later. load-path does not crawl a directory hierarchy, so if you store emacs lisp within ~/emacs/, you'll need to add those directories here. To see the value of the load-path use "C-h v" in emacs. I then define "custom.el" as it's own file to prevent customize from saving configuration in my init file. Then I use require to load a number of display-related functions (from the file ~/emacs/tycho-display.el,) including the tycho-font-medium function.

Then I have a number of machine-specific configuration opens set, mostly to keep multiple machines from overwriting state files.

Finally, I load the file with the real configuration with the (require 'tycho-init) sexp. The configuration is located in the ~/emacs/tycho-init.el file. The file closes with the (menu-bar-mode -1) sexp, which is the last part of the configuration to evaluate and ensures that there isn't a menu-bar at all.

Require and Provide

require, however, does not simply load .el files in the load path. Rather, the file needs to be announced to emacs. Accomplish this with provide functions in the file. For ~/emacs/tycho-display.el the relevant parts are as follows:

(provide 'tycho-display)

(defun tycho-font-medium ()
  (interactive)
  (setq default-frame-alist '((font-backend . "xft")
                              (font . "Inconsolata-13")
                              (vertical-scroll-bars . 0)
                              (menu-bar-lines . 0)
                              (tool-bar-lines . 0)
                              (alpha 86 84)))
  (tool-bar-mode -1)
  (scroll-bar-mode -1))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c f m") 'tychoish-font-medium)

(setq-default inhibit-startup-message 't
              initial-scratch-message 'nil
              save-place t
              scroll-bar-mode nil
              tool-bar-mode nil
              menu-bar-mode nil
              scroll-margin 0
              indent-tabs-mode nil
              flyspell-issue-message-flag 'nil
              size-indication-mode t
              scroll-conservatively 25
              scroll-preserve-screen-position 1
              cursor-in-non-selected-windows nil)

The provide call, identifies this file as the location of the tycho-display functionality. tycho-font-medium describes the font and display parameters that I called in the .emacs file. And the file ends with a keybiding to call that function and a number of default settings.

Init and Conclusion

While the tycho-init.el file holds all of the interesting configuration options, functions and settings, it's mostly beyond the scope of this file. When you download contributed emacs.lisp files from emacswiki, put them in ~/emacs/ and put the require call in tycho-init.el. By convention provide names map to file names but be sure to check files to ensure that this is the case.

Using this setup as a framework, you can create--without confusion--a number of configuration files to properly collect and organize your settings, emacs modes, and other emacs code and functions that you've gotten from other users. Good luck!

You may also be interested in a couple other tutorials I've collected on emacs, notably:

• /posts/running-multiple-emacs-daemons-on-a-single-system
• /posts/decreasing-emacs-start-times