elisp

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• Introduction

Welcome to my Emacs initialization files.

The main initialization file is =emacs.el=, which is loaded as part of a machine-specific bootstrap process.

• ELPA

I use [[http://tromey.com/elpa/][ELPA]], the Emacs Lisp Package Archive, but don't check that directory into this repository.

• Load Path

The global variable =my-emacs-lib-dir= must be defined to point to this directory. That is done automatically in =bootstrap-init.el=, but you can always override it if you need to.

The load path is set up to look in the Emacs installation first, then in =my-emacs-lib-dir=.

• Bootstrap Process

Since I use Emacs on multiple machines, I came up with a customization scheme that lets me run "before" and "after" code for each machine around my main initialization code. Each domain (work, home, etc.) gets its own subdirectory and each machine gets its own subdirectory within the domain. Inside there are a number of files, all optional: =before.el=, =after.el=, =keys.el=, =custom.el=, and the bookmark file =emacs.bmk= which is not checked in to source control.

On each box I create a small =init.el= file in that machine's =user-emacs-directory= which looks something like this: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (load-file "~/.emacs.d/elisp/bootstrap-init.el") (bootstrap-init "home" "sysex") #+end_src

See bootstrap-init.el for the definition of =bootstrap-init=. That function finds the directory corresponding containing the customization files corresponding to its args. It then runs the =before.el= file in that directory, then the main customization file =emacs.el=, then =after.el=.

The bootstrap process sets a number of variables including =custom-file=, =my-emacs-lib-dir=, =my-emacs-bootstrap-domain=, and =my-emacs-bootstrap-machine=.

The shell script =setup.sh= creates the init file and does a few other things.

** Key Bindings

=emacs.el= loads =keys.el= which does pretty much the same thing that the bootstrap process does: it defines my normal key bindings then loads the =keys.el= file in the bootstrap directory specified earlier.

• See Also

See also my [[http://www.jimmenard.com/emacs_tips.html][Emacs tips]] page.