Madmacs

This is my Emacs configuration. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Important: This is not a configuration framework. Feel free to steal, but don't expect that this will just work for you. It is tailored to my environment.

Modern Emacs UX with focus on programming

This is my emacs configuration, made for me as a software engineer. I use vanilla emacs for editing, eglot as my LSP client and I use modern power ups to support my workflow:

• Vertico + Corfu + Marginalia for completion and choices
• Embark for contextual actions
• Copilot / Gptel to bring AI to my work

My Emacs Configuration Approach

I use plain Emacs Lisp for my configuration. To manage packages, I employ use-package alongside straight. This setup provides a straightforward boot process that's easy to understand and modify. While my setup starts fairly quickly, I don't focus heavily on startup time. Personally, I do not restart Emacs frequently, so startup speed isn't a primary concern for me.

Usage

Install Emacs

make install-emacs

Set the configuration

1. clone the repository to ~/.config/emacs
2. run make deps
3. start emacs

Keybindings

There are a couple of very basic conventions that I have applied.

1. C-j for global actions that are not already present via the standard C-x map.
2. C-c <letter> for mode specific global actions, which I bind in the keymaps of the respective mode
3. M-g for going to places and things.
4. M-s for searching things and places.
5. C-. for context specific actions (on point, or region, etc.) via embark
6. When I don't use something often, it's not bound to a key necessarily, because I can always M-x it and be just fine.

This follows Emacs standards to a greater extend while minimizing conflicts.

Usage of LLM / AI to assist programming

I've enabled and configured GitHub Copilot and GPTel, ready to be used from within Emacs. Copilot is used for auto-completion of code, while GPTel is made available to interact in any buffer. In addition, there are embark actions available for gptel, so you can use C-. to access them in the given context.

Environment

When you use the GUI Emacs on MacOS, which is me, you have to make sure that the environment is setup correctly. In particular you want your PATH setup so that everything is in place. Otherwise you may end up with native compilation problems because the proper paths can't be found. On top of that it's just handy to be able to set the environment explicitly.

If you want to do that just place a file named madmacs.env in your emacs directory. This will be read on startup and madmacs sets the environment from it. It will also update the exec-path.

The content of the file is a simplified env file, which you can obtain by running env > ~/.config/emacs/madmacs.env. Please double check that you don't have any secrets in this file.