Tips on Managing Emacs Config Files

Table of Contents

• 1 Handle Complex Configurations
  • 1.1 .emacs.d/init.el and version control
  • 1.2 Add several load-path using one line code
  • 1.3 Structure your config file cleaner

1 Handle Complex Configurations

1.1 .emacs.d/init.el and version control

When you split your config code into several files under the directory .emacs.d/, you may leave an .emacs file alone outside this .emacs.d/ directory which is not friendly to version control tools. Actually, you can replace .emacs with .emacs.d/init.el.

1.2 Add several load-path using one line code

(nconc load-path (mapcar (lambda (p) (concat "~/.emacs.d/" p))
                         (split-string "/ pkgs pkgs2 pkgs2/color-theme pkgs2/yasnippet pkgs2/auctex pkgs2/nxhtml")))

1.3 Structure your config file cleaner

• First cluster your config code into several categories, such as ui, edit, tools, dev, doc. All config code of one category goes into one file. I will give an outline of dev file as an example:

...
(defun init-dev-misc () ...)
(defun init-make () ...)
(defun init-gdb () ...)

(defun init-asm () ...)
(defun init-cc () ...)
(defun init-python () ...)
(defun init-lua () ...)
(defun init-scheme () ...)
(defun init-web ()

(provide 'dev)

Instead of place init code in file scope, I place them in several init functions. This makes code more readable and gives me more flexibility over controlling how to initialize emacs shown below.

• Then, you can use follwing code to control which init functions need to be called.

(setq init-spec 
'((ui ui-visual ui-interactive)
(edit edit-basic edit-key-binding abbrev outline yasnippet)
(tools env-vars eshell tramp dired)
(dev dev-misc make gdb !asm cc python !lua !scheme !web)
(doc !txt2tag auctex ispell org !gnuplot ascii-doc)))

(defun init-may-be (x) (if (not (string-match "^!"  x)) (funcall (intern (concat "init-" x)))))
(defun init-module (pkg &rest funcs)  (require pkg) (mapcar (lambda (func) (init-may-be (symbol-name func))) funcs))
(defun init-all (spec) (mapcar (lambda (x) (apply 'init-module x)) spec))
(init-all init-spec)

As you see, init-spec list all config file and init functions defined there. If you want to disable some init functions, just add a ! before their names.

If you are interest, here is my .emacs.d