EmacsTips - Tech - The Caboteria

_(back to ProgrammingNotes)_

Emacs is more than an editor - it's a lifestyle.  I spent years using vi but have fairly recently started to make the investment to join the cult.  I prefer emacs to IDE's because I feel that the investment in time that I spend learning it will be more likely to pay off because emacs has been around for a long time and will continue to be around for a long time.  Also, more of the smartest people I've worked with have used emacs than all other development environments combined (although lately Eclipse is gaining).

*Packages* - here's a great idea; a package manager for emacs (like cpan for perl): http://tromey.com/elpa/

*C style* - p.322 =M-x c-set-style= <code>GNU|K&R|BSD|Stroustrup|Whitesmith|Ellemtel</code> Vovida code appears to use =Stroustrup=.

*Tabs* - to replace tabs with spaces mark a region then =M-x untabify= (=M-x tabify= goes the other way).  Useful variables related to tabs are
   * =indent-tabs-mode= - =t= for spaces, =nil= for tabs
   * =tab-width= - number of spaces per tab
   * =c-tab-always-indent= - if =t=, will always indent a line of code.  if =nil=, will indent only if you hit the tab key at the beginning of the line.
You can embed these commands in a comment on the first line of a file.  Let's say you want to interact with files created by people using Eclipse with its completely retarded default config of hard 4-character tabs.  Just make sure that this text is somewhere on the first line of the file, either inside a =/* ... */= or after a =//=:

=-*- indent-tabs-mode: t; tab-width: 4 -*-=

*Ant* - to use ant instead of make to compile programs inside emacs, you'll want to run ant with the =-emacs= flag which makes the output more plain but allows emacs to find error messages.  The easy way to do this is to add =(custom-set-variables '(compile-command "ant -emacs"))= to your .emacs file.

*Compiling* - =M-x compile=, then =C-x `= (i.e. back-tick) to go to the next error.

*Code Browsing* - http://ecb.sourceforge.net/ I haven't played with this package yet but it looks good

*Java* - a good integrated development environment for Java is JDEE at http://jdee.sourceforge.net/.  It's not that easy to install (it has lots of dependencies).

*SQL* - yes, there's a mode for editing SQL queries: http://www.pezaris.com/sql-mode/

*DOS* - If you have to edit DOS files (which is likely if you program for a living ;) ) then Emacs works very well indeed.  You can use it to translate into DOS or Unix format : =C-x RET f unix RET= or =C-x RET f dos RET= (don't forget to save the file after you do).  For more info see the [[http://www.gnu.org/manual/emacs/html_node/emacs_558.html][manual]].

*XSLT* - http://xslt-process.sourceforge.net/

*Mac* - there are a few places to get emacs for the mac:
   * Apple: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/carbonemacspackage.html
   * Pork Rind: http://porkrind.org/emacs/ - very few changes from GNU sources
   * Aquamacs: http://aquamacs.org/ - heavily customized to be more mac-like.

*Windows* - you can use cygwin's bash as a shell within emacs by putting =c:\cygwin\bin= in your windows path before running emacs.  [[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs/discuss/bash-setup][this link]] might also help.

   * [[%ATTACHURL%/.emacs][.emacs]]: .emacs file for Windows emacs


*Tips* - http://wttools.sourceforge.net/emacs-stuff/package.html<br/>
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsNiftyTricks<br/>
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/07/0533222<br/>
http://emacsrocks.com/<br/>

*Emacs Starter Kit* - http://www.emacsblog.org/2008/12/05/emacs-starter-kit/

*Debian Snapshot* - http://emacs.orebokech.com/
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I	Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
emacs	.emacs	manage	2.7 K	29 Sep 2003 - 11:51	TobyCabot	.emacs file for Windows emacs