Core

Minimal configuration to make Emacs usable for my own personal workflow. This does little in the ways of improving the visuals, only removing what's included by default and not required. Read more about my technique in my post Immutable Emacs¹

Packages are managed with straight.el²
Packages are installed with use-package³

Babel

Organize your plain life in plain text

Org-mode⁴ is one of the hallmark features of Emacs, and provides the basis for my Literate Programming⁵ platform. It's essentially a markdown language with rich features for project management, scheduling, development, and writing. It's hard to convey everything within its capabilities.

Force straight.el² to ignore the local version of Org-mode⁴

(straight-use-package '(org :local-repo nil))

Setup shell and emacs-lisp as Babel Languages⁴
Configure Structure Templates⁴ for both languages

(use-package org
  :hook (org-mode . (lambda ()
          (org-indent-mode)
          (visual-line-mode 1)
          (variable-pitch-mode 1)))
  :custom (org-ellipsis " ▾")
          (org-log-done 'time)
          (org-log-into-drawer t)
          (org-return-follows-link t)
          (org-image-actual-width nil)
          (org-directory dotfiles/home)
          (org-src-fontify-natively t)
          (org-src-tab-acts-natively t)
          (org-src-preserve-indentation t)
          (org-confirm-babel-evaluate nil)
          (org-todo-keywords '((sequence "TODO" "START" "WAIT" "DONE")))
  :config (require 'org-tempo)
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("s" . "src"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("q" . "quote"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("e" . "example"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("sh" . "src shell"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("el" . "src emacs-lisp"))
          (org-babel-do-load-languages 'org-babel-load-languages '((shell . t)
                                                                   (emacs-lisp . t))))

Cleanup

Despite having our stateful and immutable configurations seperate, it's good practice to make efforts to reduce the trash created by Emacs. Install no-littering⁶ to reduce the files created by Emacs. Now that we've taken care of how it acts, we can work on how it looks. Emacs' default user interface is horrendous, let's do something about that. Emacs has a long history of running on machines without gigabytes of available memory, let it realize its full potential by increasing the garbage collection threshold.

(use-package no-littering
  :custom (inhibit-startup-message t)
          (initial-scratch-message "")
          (comp-deferred-compilation t)
          (custom gc-cons-threshold most-positive-fixnum)
  :config (global-prettify-symbols-mode)
           (when (fboundp 'tooltip-mode)
             (tooltip-mode -1))
           (when (fboundp 'tool-bar-mode)
             (tool-bar-mode -1))
           (when (fboundp 'menu-bar-mode)
             (menu-bar-mode -1))
           (when (fboundp 'scroll-bar-mode)
             (scroll-bar-mode -1)))

Methods

Define some helper methods to use throughout the configuration.

Tangle directory

Build all of the Org⁴ files within a given directory, recursively.

(defun dotfiles/tangle (dir)
  "Recursively tangle the Org files within a directory."
  (let ((org-files (directory-files-recursively dir "org")))
    (dolist (f org-files)
      (org-babel-tangle-file f))))

Force symbolic links

Function that takes in a system and configuration file path, checks to see if the system file doesn't exist, or doesn't point to the configuration file, deleting it for the latter, then creating a symbolic link to the configuration file in place.

(defun dotfiles/symlink (src tgt)
  "Forces a symlink from `src' to `tgt'."
  (let ((sys-file (expand-file-name tgt))
        (dot-file (expand-file-name src)))
    (when (or (not (file-exists-p sys-file))
              (not (equal (file-symlink-p sys-file) dot-file)))
      (delete-file sys-file)
      (make-symbolic-link dot-file sys-file))))

Install system packages

Define a method to install system packages on Debian/Ubuntu derived systems.

Use temporary buffer
Use -y option to silence unwanted prompts
Use --no-install-recommends option to minimize dependencies

(defun dotfiles/install (pkgs)
  "Install system packages on Debian/Ubuntu systems."
  ;; (with-temp-buffer
  ;;   (async-shell-command 
  ;;     (concat "sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends " pkgs)))
)