Archemacs

This is my personal configuration for Emacs! It’s largely Doom-Emacs themed, and specifically tweaked to be good at the things I personally like doing.

You can use it too if you like! But I can’t really attest to the general-purpose nature of the things that are in here~

About

Less than 3 seconds to a usable state!

I’ve tried my best to make my configuration lightweight based on the things that are actually installed, so when you run the code block below, the Archemacs.el file that will result should only contain code blocks for the things you have installed–if you install something new, you’ll need to re-run the below code block!

Besides the language support, this config sets up:

• Multiple cursors (With bindings similar to VSCode)
• Idle highlighting (But only in code)
• Out-of-the-box universal M-. jumping (Improved if you have ripgrep)
• Autocompletion with documentation popups
• C-M-f fuzzy file/project finding
• Mid-chord key help popups
• Daemon-friendly lazy GUI initialization
• Emacs server starting if sent a USR1 signal (pkill -USR1 emacs will let you connect to already-running emacs with emacsclient if you need to)
• Language server support (M-x eglot)
• magit
• Gemini and Gopher client with proper url-handlers
• epub reader
• hexl-mode improvements
• Persistent prompt history, auto-chmod +x for scripts, trailing whitespace cleanup, and a bunch of other little niceties

Installation in a nutshell

• Run git -C ~/.emacs.d clone https://github.com/Archenoth/Archemacs.git
• Open this file in org-mode (emacs ~/.emacs.d/Archemacs/README.org)
• Run the code block below with C-c C-c:

(org-babel-tangle-file "~/.emacs.d/Archemacs/Archemacs.org")

• Add the following line into your .emacs or init.el:

(load-file "~/.emacs.d/Archemacs/Archemacs.el")

• Restart Emacs.

You might also want to grab ripgrep if you don’t already have it, because this config uses that for projectile, dumb-jump, and grep (Though nothing should break without it)

If you want the font customization, please follow the instructions in fonts.org.

Some tips about how I personally use this

• My pattern of usage revolves around bookmarking project folders with C-x r m, and either clicking them in the dashboard, or by finding them in C-x r l (Though note that absolute canonical paths are helpful if you have your Code folder symlinked from somewhere not in your home folder)
• C-M-f is for fuzzy-finding files in projects that I get to with bookmarks
• I heavily use M-x grep to find things when M-. won’t give me the information I need, so it auto-starts searches in the root of git projects, otherwise, it searches subfolders without needing to add anything to the command line
• Remember that emmet exists! Write CSS selectors in HTML files and C-RET to expand that into the HTML that will be
• Multiple cursors are set up like the subset I use in other things like VSCode, so Ctrl + Click adds new cursors, as do C-M-up and C-M-down, and C-d to mark the next thing that is highlighted.

Some nice things to configure per system

ibuffer filter groups! Then you can do something like

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-b") 'ibuffer)
(add-hook 'ibuffer-mode-hook
  (lambda () (ibuffer-switch-to-saved-filter-groups "Arch")))

I personally like this general idea:

(custom-set-variables
 '(ibuffer-saved-filter-groups
   '(("Arch"
      ("Dashboard" (mode . dashboard-mode))
      ("Git" (mode . magit-status-mode))
      ("Temp" (filename . "Desktop/"))
      ("Remote" (filename . "/sshx:"))
      ("Org files" (filename . ".org"))
      ("Some Code Project"
       (and (not (name . "magit"))
            (filename . "Code/ThatProject")))
      ("Some Other Code Project"
       (and (not (name . "magit"))
            (filename . "Code/ThatProjectAlso")))
      ("Chat" (mode . erc-mode))
      ("Processes and info" (starred-name)))))
 '(ibuffer-show-empty-filter-groups nil))

That way, I can just C-x b to get to a list of my open things, and I can just middle click on the magit buffer for a specific project to get to a place where I can do git things, or C-M-f and jump into some code!

It’s also nice to be able to click on groups and hit D to just delete swaths of buffers I don’t actually need anymore. That keeps things light and easy to navigate!

Tips to go even lighter!

If this is still too heavy, there are some neat ways to cut down on the things needed, aside from removing language support for things you don’t use of course (Which I recommend by putting a :tangle never in the headers of the blocks you don’t actually want in Archemacs.org btw)

• Tangle Archemacs.org with C-c C-v t and replace the (org-babel-load-file "~/.emacs.d/Archemacs/Archemacs.org") with a (load-file "~/.emacs.d/Archemacs/Archemacs.el"). (Just don’t forget to re-tangle with if you change anything in there!) This gets rid of the need for org to be loaded on startup
• You can replace projectile for the most part with (global-set-key (kbd "C-M-f") 'project-find-file). This works great in git folders, and tab will let you fuzzy find things in that folder!
• You can replace almost all language support with dumb-jump on its own with rg installed and with judicious setting of (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.thing$" . thing-mode)) with langauges that are “close enough”
• Remember that customize will load the modes you assign certain custom variables for, so if you customize a variable for projectile, it will actually load that on startup rather than doing that lazily. This can be avoided with (with-eval-after-load 'the-package ...) forms that set the right state
• You can usually replace multiple-cursors with macros or find-replace in the active region. (It’s just a little bit more clunky)
• which-key can be replaced by remembering that typing a ? at any point during a key chord will list all the valid keys for your current incomplete chord. Again, just a little more clunky, but still pretty good!
• company usually just hooks into the existing completion, but that is bound to Alt+Tab by default, which means something on a lot of computers–but you can get those completions with ESC Tab in a pinch too! If you rely on completion, this will be slower–but it’s also native Emacs functionality
• magit’s git support is stellar, but the built-in vc support is actually surprisingly okay if magit is too heavy for you too! You can get a list of the things you can do with it by typing C-x v ?. Of special note: L for the log, D for the diff of the while project, === for the current file diff. Selective staging and things can be done from these, and v is what lets you commit and stuff. (Though I personally prefer to just use CLI git for most things, even when magit is available–I just find it handy for selective staging, browsing changes, and for double-checking things while I am committing them)

Basically, you can remove almost all of the non-theming code and still have a pretty respectable environment that loads pretty fast! I mostly have things in this config for convenience reasons–and even though they all add up to not be a lot, none of it is reaaaaally needed if you are familiar with the vanilla Emacs functionality these things augment.