6 ms·

Does anyone know of a good "get up and running with emacs" style tutorial which includes setting up of package management/repositories aimed at the emacs newbie

Does anyone know of a good "get up and running with emacs" style tutorial which includes setting up of package management/repositories aimed at the emacs newbie? The built-in tutorial is great for learning to edit with emacs, but I'm looking for something that will quickly explain the state of the nation with regard to emacs package management.

chriswarbo 12y ago
Complete beginners: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6170/what-are-some-excellent-emacs-utter-beginner-resources http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6170/what-are-some-e... Tricks and tips for experienced users: http://whattheemacsd.com/ http://whattheemacsd.com/ General Emacs blogs and news: http://planet.emacsen.org/ http://planet.emacsen.org/
tenfingers 12y ago
It's important to note that, generally speaking, you don't need packages if you are an emacs newbie. I tend to generally give the same advice to vim newbies who think they absolutely need to have 10 packages to put !COLORS! to be productive. The emacs distribution comes with everything under the sun, plus the kitchen sink already. And I mean it literally. Loading more packages, without understanding elisp and/or how emacs generally work, doesn't translate to "more productivity" in my mind. That's how you would approach packages in a sane way: - you start using emacs - you start tweaking a mode that you use often - you decide the tweak is still not enough and/or you envision a better way to do things - you look up online for an alternative emacs package/mode - you install it The built-in package manager helps you only with the last step. And to be honest, there's not much that you have to do if you want to install it by hand, because at this point you should be at least familiar with elisp and emacs. Another important note: elisp packages are mostly "stale". There are some big packages which are continuously improving, but whenever I read some mode sources, I discover they were last updated years ago, and didn't really need any changes. I used to check for a couple of big packages manually on a year basis before using "package". Now I can automate the task, but I actually only update whenever I have a bug I noticed or I have time to read the full changelog. You don't want your editor to have different behavior between updates, really.
- onedognight 12y ago
  > The emacs distribution comes with everything under the sun, plus the kitchen sink already. And I mean it literally. No it doesn't. There is no php-mode which is nothing other than a leadership failure given that PHP it is a decade(s)-old, top-5 language.
  - empthought 12y ago
    The leading Emacs PHP mode hasn't had its copyright transferred to the FSF and therefore can't be included.
  - tenfingers 12y ago
    php-mode is quite a glaring omission from the official emacs distribution, but emacs itself being managed by FSF/RMS himself he's quite picky about licensing. That being said, on debian/ubuntu, php mode is "php-elisp" as an official package that you can install system-wide.
avtar 12y ago
It doesn't cover package management but I found this to be a great tutorial http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html
- lgp171188 12y ago
  I have learnt a lot more about Emacs using emacsmovies.org

chriswarbo 12y ago

Complete beginners: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6170/what-are-some-excellent-emacs-utter-beginner-resources http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6170/what-are-some-e... Tricks and tips for experienced users: http://whattheemacsd.com/ http://whattheemacsd.com/ General Emacs blogs and news: http://planet.emacsen.org/ http://planet.emacsen.org/

tenfingers 12y ago

It's important to note that, generally speaking, you don't need packages if you are an emacs newbie. I tend to generally give the same advice to vim newbies who think they absolutely need to have 10 packages to put !COLORS! to be productive. The emacs distribution comes with everything under the sun, plus the kitchen sink already. And I mean it literally. Loading more packages, without understanding elisp and/or how emacs generally work, doesn't translate to "more productivity" in my mind. That's how you would approach packages in a sane way: - you start using emacs - you start tweaking a mode that you use often - you decide the tweak is still not enough and/or you envision a better way to do things - you look up online for an alternative emacs package/mode - you install it The built-in package manager helps you only with the last step. And to be honest, there's not much that you have to do if you want to install it by hand, because at this point you should be at least familiar with elisp and emacs. Another important note: elisp packages are mostly "stale". There are some big packages which are continuously improving, but whenever I read some mode sources, I discover they were last updated years ago, and didn't really need any changes. I used to check for a couple of big packages manually on a year basis before using "package". Now I can automate the task, but I actually only update whenever I have a bug I noticed or I have time to read the full changelog. You don't want your editor to have different behavior between updates, really.

onedognight 12y ago
> The emacs distribution comes with everything under the sun, plus the kitchen sink already. And I mean it literally. No it doesn't. There is no php-mode which is nothing other than a leadership failure given that PHP it is a decade(s)-old, top-5 language.
- empthought 12y ago
  The leading Emacs PHP mode hasn't had its copyright transferred to the FSF and therefore can't be included.
- tenfingers 12y ago
  php-mode is quite a glaring omission from the official emacs distribution, but emacs itself being managed by FSF/RMS himself he's quite picky about licensing. That being said, on debian/ubuntu, php mode is "php-elisp" as an official package that you can install system-wide.

avtar 12y ago

It doesn't cover package management but I found this to be a great tutorial http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html

lgp171188 12y ago
I have learnt a lot more about Emacs using emacsmovies.org