I have decided to check out Emacs, and I liked it very much. Now, I'm using the Emacs Starter Kit, which sort of provides better defaults and some nice customizations to default install of Emacs.
I have customized it a little, added some stuff like yasnippet, color-themes, unbound, and other stuff. I've set up a github repository where I keep all of the customizations so I can access them from multiple places or in case something goes bad and I lose my .emacs.d directory.
All of this is very nice, but there is a problem: Emacs takes about 1-2 seconds to load. AFAIK I can compile individual .el files with M-x byte-compile-file to .elc, and it works. But there are a lot of .el files, and I wonder if there is a way to compile them all with a simple command or something, to speed up the loading of Emacs. My Emacs is not always open, and I open and close it quite frequently, especially after I've set it up as a default editor for edit command in Total Commander to get used to it faster (yeah, windows xp here).
My Emacs version is 22.3. And yes, the default Emacs installation without any customizations fires up instantly.
I am not sure which version is preferred when loading, the .el or compiled .elc one by the way O.o
So, is there an elisp command or Emacs command line switch to make Emacs byte-compile everything in .emacs.d directory?
C-u 0 M-x byte-recompile-directory
will compile all the .el files in the directory and in all subdirectories below.
The C-u 0 part is to make it not ask about every .el file that does not have a .elc counterpart.
To automatically byte compile everything that needs byte compiling each time I start emacs, I put the following after my changes to load-path at the top of my .emacs file:
(byte-recompile-directory (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d") 0)
Surprisingly, it doesn't add much to my startup time (unless something needs to be compiled).
To speed up my emacs, I first identified the slow parts using profile-dotemacs.el and then replaced them with autoloads.
You can use the --batch flag to recompile from the command line.
To recompile all, do
emacs --batch --eval '(byte-recompile-directory "~/.emacs.d")'
or to recompile a single file as from a Makefile,
emacs --batch --eval '(byte-compile-file "your-elisp-file.el")'
This is swaying a bit from the question, but to solve the problem of loading slowly you can use the new daemon feature in Emacs 23.
"If you have a lot of support packages,
emacs startup can be a bit slow.
However, emacs 23 brings emacs
--daemon, which enables you to start emacs in the background (for example
when you log in). You can instantly
pop up new emacs windows (frames) with
emacsclient. Of course, you could
already have an emacs 'server' in
older versions, but being able to
start it in the background makes this
a much nicer solution"
From http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2009/07/emacs-23-is-very-near.html
The command I use is M-x byte-force-recompile RET, it then asks the directory so, for example, I give it ~/.emacs.d/elpa/. It then recompiles everything in there, usually no need to delete .elc files first or mess with it in other ways.
For my using spacemacs, the command is spacemacs/recompile-elpa. The command byte-recompile-directory does not compile any file.
Related
So I've finally decided to learn Lisp. I'm reading Practical Common Lisp and I'm using Lispbox (not the one the book recommends - it's no longer available, but it seems this is suitable nonetheless).
So far in my career I have managed to avoid wresting with emacs, but I guess that part of my life is over :-) Actually, I'm kind of excited - this is a brand new world.
When saving .lisp files, the out-of-the-box setup dumps these files into the lispbox-0.7 folder (which is also the LISPBOX_HOME env.var). My math teacher taught me, "If you don't know what you're doing, at least do it neatly." So I want to at least keep my work in a nice tidy folder. I can specify the full path on saving/loading. But can I tell (lispbox|emacs|whatever) to use a different folder by default?
If it matters: I will likely use the Windows version more often, but I also have a setup on Ubuntu.
I have looked at this and this and this. I tried adding these to the .emacs file (one at a time):
(setq default-directory "C:/Work/lisp/")
(cd "C:/Work/lisp/")
To open the .emacs file I used C-x C-f~/.emacs
If I try changing the LispBox shortcut's "Start in" property, it fails to load at all.
M-xcd c:/work/lisp does work, but I have to do it every time I launch LispBox
What I'm doing in the meantime: I've created a separate lisp folder beside the lispbox-0.7 folder. That way I can prepend ../lisp/ before any filename. This isn't so bad, especially with the tab auto-complete.
Found it!
The reason modifying .emacs wasn't working is because of the lispbox.bat file. It has this line:
%EMACS% --no-init-file --no-site-file --eval=%TO_EVAL%
So took out the two "no" parameters, leaving this...
%EMACS% --eval=%TO_EVAL%
...and it worked.
This worried me, though. Why would the default not want to load the .emacs file? I guess once I understand all of this better I'll have an answer. Until then, I restored the above, the changed this line...
set TO_EVAL="(progn (load \"lispbox\") (slime))"
...to this...
set TO_EVAL="(progn (load \"lispbox\") (slime) (cd \"C:/work/lisp/\"))"
Now I'm happy.
I know nothing about Lisp Box, and not all of what you describe is clear to me. But here goes.
It sounds like you are looking for a way to make c:/work/lisp the default directory when you start Emacs. For that, using an MS Windows shortcut, putting that folder in the Start in field does indeed accomplish that. But you speak of a LispBox shortcut's Start in. If by that you just mean an Emacs shortcut, then it should work.
But of course you need to use Windows syntax for the folder - not c:/work/lisp, but c:\work\lisp.
Is that what the problem was?
The Windows shortcut is a Windows thing. Emacs is different: it accepts / as a folder separator.
Tip: If that solves your problem, you might also want to start Emacs in Dired mode on that same folder, that is, if that folder is the one you will use a lot. To do that, add that folder at the end of the command line - again, using Windows syntax, but between double-quotes:
c:\your\path\to\runemacs.exe "c:\work\lisp"
Try starting lispbox.bat from the directory you want to save files to. For example, from the OS command prompt:
cd c:\work\lisp
path-to-bat-file\lispbox.bat
You can also cd to c:\work\lisp in listbox.bat before it executes Emacs. For Linux it looks like this in lispbox.sh:
#!/bin/bash
if [ "${0:0:2}" = "./" ]; then
export LISPBOX_HOME=`pwd`/../../..
else
export LISPBOX_HOME=`dirname $0`/../../..
fi
cd ~/work/lisp
export SBCL_HOME=${LISPBOX_HOME}/sbcl-1.0.42/lib/sbcl
exec ${LISPBOX_HOME}/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs --no-init-file --no-site-file --eval='(progn (load "lispbox") (slime))'
I used to take the Programming languages course on Coursera and for the sake of the course i installed SML-Mode.
Now, I'd want to set up a Clojure environment in Emacs but instead of initializing Emacs from ~/.emacs.d, it initializes from the Users/karthik/Documents/sml-mode/sml-mode-startup
I deleted the sml-mode folder and on Emacs startup it shows me a warning about the files not being present. How I do point Emacs to load Emacs Live from the home folder.
I'm an Emacs newbie.
One easy way to do it, is
save you closure settings in /some/dir/my-closure-settings.el and call emacs as the following (to learn about -q -l , try emacs --help )
$ emacs -q -l /some/dir/my-closure-settings.el
or even placing an alias in bashrc,
$ alias closure-emacs='emacs -q -l /some/dir/my-closure-settings.el'
$ closure-emacs # will start emacs with your closure settings.
As you progress in learning some elisp, you will want to do it in one folder.
Assuming you installed Emacs yourself, and this SML-mode was an independent package, then I would speculated that it may have modified your site-start.el.
See if running emacs --no-site-file makes a difference.
If that's the issue, you can visit the file with:
M-: (find-library site-run-file) RET
You might also check:
C-hv user-emacs-directory RET
when running emacs in various ways:
emacs
emacs --no-site-file
emacs -q
emacs -Q
Unless it's a custom binary, at some point it should tell you "~/.emacs.d/"
Installing SML-mode does not change the place of the main initialization file, which is one of ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el. So look at those files (which ever of the two is present), and if none is present, then just create it and add what you need in it.
BTW, it looks like you're using an old sml-mode package (the newer one doesn't have an sml-mode-startup.el file). So please try and make sure the documentation that pointed you to that mode is updated: nowaday sml-mode should be installed from GNU ELPA, i.e. via M-x package-list or M-x package-install.
I'm new to Emacs so its all a bit new to me. I got a hang of the basics of Emacs like navigation,etc.
I was trying to install a Clojure REPL in Emacs, i cloned a .emacs repo and replaced .emacs with it. I opened up Emacs again, i'm at a loss as to how to fire up the clojure REPL.
https://github.com/ghoseb/dotemacs
this is the .emacs repo i'm using.
Thank you.
Folder Name
Just to clarify, you want the repo you cloned to be called .emacs.d. It should contain an elisp file called init.el, which Emacs will run on startup.
Starting a REPL
For this configuration, you should be able to use M-x nrepl-jack-in to start a repl.
To be honest, I recommend you use one of the publicly-maintained emacs configurations rather than someone's personal settings (which they may change or break at any time). Emacs Prelude and Emacs Live have good Clojure settings.
I'm using some plugins and I byte-compiled my .emacs but the start up still slow. Do I hava to byte-compile my prlugins too? (for instance, yasnippet.el -> yasnippet.elc)?
Byte compiled files load up faster so I'd recommend that you byte compile everything as Pascal suggested. I also keep this in my init file so automatically byte compile all the emacs lisp files I edit and save.
(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook '(lambda ()
(add-hook 'after-save-hook 'emacs-lisp-byte-compile t t))) ;; Automatically byte-compile emacs-lisp files upon save
Emacs can feel slow to start up even without any .emacs or plugins :)
It is a good idea to compile plug-ins, that's as much time shaved from start-up. Compiling the .emacs configuration file is less usual (because it changes more often and is typically small anyway), but why not?
You probably already know this, but .el files can be byte-compiled using: M-x byte-compile-file or M-x byte-recompile-directory .
You can use emacs server to speed things up, then it only takes time to start the server the first time.
The way to start an Emacs server is to run Emacs as a daemon, using the ‘--daemon’ command-line option. When Emacs is started this way, it calls server-start after initialization, and returns control to the calling terminal instead of opening an initial frame; it then waits in the background, listening for edit requests.
Once an Emacs server is set up, you can use a shell command called emacsclient to connect to the existing Emacs process and tell it to visit a file. If you set the EDITOR environment variable to ‘emacsclient’, programs such as mail will use the existing Emacs process for editing.
From: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Emacs-Server.html
You'll likely find something use here: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoRecompile
A great selection of tips for automatically byte-compiling files, when you save them or when you load them, and even caching the compiled files in a certain directory.
How do you recompile emacs-lisp scripts from within emacs without problems? I've tried batch-recompile-direcory, but this causes weird glitches with the recompiled files until I restart emacs. Is there any way to do this so that no errors are caused?
This page of the GNU Emacs Reference manual taks about reloading files and/or libraries.
You definitely have to explicitey reload the new file with M-x load-library, unless there is another emacs mechanism that forces it to reload the newly byte-compiled function.