emacs.d

My configuration files for GNU Emacs, tested on Linux and Windows.

It requires the function org-babel-load-file to be present, otherwise the literate config file won't be tangled and loaded. It consists of two files:

• emacs-config.org, the literate configuration file.
• init.el, which tangles and loads emacs-config.org.

That's it!

Installation

• Make sure your version of Emacs is relatively recent (26.1+).

• Clone this repository to your $HOME folder, or wherever .emacs.d should live on your operating system. On Windows 10, you'll want to put it in C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d.

• Launch Emacs; it may take a minute or so for the packages to download and compile. After this is done, though, starting Emacs should be quite quick: under a couple of seconds at most.

For best visual results, install Adobe Source Serif 4 (Regular, Italic, Bold, and BoldItalic versions.)

For Org-Protocol, see here.

Additional Windows dependencies (make sure the binaries are available on the %PATH%):

• GnuPG for org-crypt
• sqlite3 for org-roam
• unzip for nov.el (you can install Git Bash and use the unzip.exe that comes with it.)
• Graphviz for rendering org-roam graphs. Specifically, you need the dot executable.

Daemon mode and emacsclient

If you're on Linux with systemd, I also recommend installing a user service that launches Emacs in daemon mode, and then also adding a .desktop file that launches emacsclient instead of emacs:

• Enable the systemd service. This comes bundled with Emacs 26+, but in case you don't already have it, just add this file as ~/.config/systemd/user/default.target.wants/emacs.service:

[Unit]
Description=Emacs text editor
Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1) https://gnu.org/software/emacs/

[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/bin/emacs --fg-daemon
ExecStop=/usr/bin/emacsclient --eval "(kill-emacs)"
# The location of the SSH auth socket varies by distribution, and some
# set it from PAM, so don't override by default.
# Environment=SSH_AUTH_SOCK=%t/keyring/ssh
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

• Run systemctl --user enable --now emacs.service.

• Copy emacs.desktop, which is in this repo, to ~/.local/share/applications/emacs.desktop. This will make emacsclient take precedence over emacs when you try to start Emacs through a GUI application launcher.

• Launch Emacs through some sort of GUI launcher. emacsclient should open instead of emacs; you'll know if it worked if the window appears instantly. Note that invoking emacs in the terminal will still load a fresh instance of Emacs, the slow way.

If you're on Windows, you'll want to do the following:

• Press Win + R, type shell:startup, then press Enter.

• Right-click -> New -> Shortcut, then set the location to "C:\Users\<User>\Path\To\Emacs\bin\runemacs.exe" --daemon (the quotes are important.) You can name the shortcut whatever you like, and I also recommend changing the starting directory to your home folder. Double-click it to start the server now without having to restart your computer.

• In a different folder (not the shell:startup folder), create another shortcut, but this time to "C:\Users\<User>\Path\To\Emacs\bin\emacsclientw.exe" -c -n -a "C:\Users\<User>\Path\To\Emacs\bin\runemacs.exe". You'll probably want to pin this one to your taskbar.