• Fast. Start up in one second
• Robust. Never crash after a full package upgrade. Packages could be installed without network
• Support Windows
• Tested with Emacs 24.4, 24.5, 25.3, 26.1 on Linux/Windows/Cygwin/macOS/WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linux)
• Original setup (key bindings, directories …) are respected
• Usable in emacs-nox. Works when ssh to server with PuTTY

• Features
• Checklist
• Installation
  • Install in normal way
  • Install stable version in easiest way (OPTIONAL)
  • Third party command line program (OPTIONAL)
• Tutorial (OPTIONAL)
  • Basic tutorial
  • Evil-mode tutorial
  • Methodology
• Usage
  • Quick start
  • Key bindings
• FAQ
  • Save/Load windows layout
  • Default terminal shell
  • Override default setup
  • Code navigation and auto-completion
  • Color theme
  • Grep/Replace text in project
  • Hydra/Swiper/Counsel/Ivy
  • React and JSX
  • git-gutter
  • Start a shell inside Emacs
  • Setup fonts in GUI Emacs
  • Synchronize setup with Git
  • Indentation
  • Editing Lisp
  • Use smart-mode-line or powerline?
  • Key bindings doesn’t work?
  • Use org-mode
  • macOS user?
  • Locked packages
  • Customize global variables
  • Open/Save file with Counsel/Ivy
  • Windows
  • Yasnippet
  • Non-English users
  • Behind corporate firewall
  • Network is blocked
  • Email
  • Cannot download packages?
  • use packages on GNU ELPA
  • Disable Vim key bindings
  • Evil setup
  • C++ auto-completion doesn’t work?
  • Auto-completion for other languages
  • Chinese Input Method Editor
  • Install multiple versions of Emacs
  • Change Time Locale
  • Directory structure
  • True colors in terminal Emacs
• Support legacy Emacs versions
  • Emacs 23
  • Emacs 24.3
  • Emacs 24.4 and 24.5
• Tips
• Report bug

• Emacs 26.1 is strongly recommended. It has better performance and easier to setup on Windows
• Please read FAQ to disable Vim key bindings
• Please read section “Key bindings” to learn key bindings
• If you use Windows Emacs, you have to install GnuTLS Dlls manually to install packages from remote repositories. Or else you got error message like error: Package `async-' is unavailable on Windows. Since version. Please note since Emacs 26.1, you can download no dependency version which is just works out of box
• Most packages from MELPA are invisible while packages from MELPA Stable are visible. You can modify variable melpa-include-packages in ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-elpa.el to install unstable packages
• Emacs 24 support will be dropped on 2019. Check “Support legacy Emacs versions” if you use old versions
• Other issues are covered in FAQ

Most users should follow the section “Install in normal way”.

You need the section “Install stable version in easiest way” if and only if:

• You don’t have network access
• You have never used any command line program

Please remove ~/.emacs.d/init.el and ~/.emacs. ~ means Home directory.

Please uninstall third party Emacs package which is not placed at ~/.emacs.d. For example, run apt-get autoremove emacs-w3m on Debian/Ubuntu.

If you don’t know what I mean, then do nothing.

There are two ways to install this setup (I recommend the first way):

1. download latest setup and extract its content into ~/.emacs.d, OR run command cd ~; git clone https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git .emacs.d in shell.
2. use stable setup, OR run command cd ~; git clone https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git .emacs.d; cd .emacs.d; git reset --hard stable in shell.

Ensure that init.el contained in this repo ends up at ~/.emacs.d/init.el.

By default, packages are installed automatically during Emacs startup.

You only need two zip files.

Here are the exact steps,

• Remove ~/.emacs.
• Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/stable.zip
• Extract its content into empty directory ~/.emacs.d
• Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/stable.zip
• Extract the zip somewhere, say ~/projs/myelpa
• Make sure a file named archive-contents exists in ~/projs/myelpa
• Uncomment the line containing “myelpa” in ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-elpa.el. Path ~/projs/myelpa/ could be modified.
• Start Emacs now!

Now you are using local package repository ~/projs/melpa.

You can switch to online repositories like http://elpa.gnu.org or http://melpa.org by modifying ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-elpa.el.

You can install them in any way you like. But using OS package manager is easier.

OS package manager means:

• apt-cyg at Cygwin
• homebrew at macOS
• any package manager at Linux (apt-get on Debian/Ubuntu, yum on Redhat, pacman on Arch, emerge on Gentoo …)

If the program is developed with certain programming language. That language may provide its own package manager which allows you to install the program only for current user. For example, python package manager has the option ”–user”.

These programs are OPTIONAL.

Please ignore any related error message. For example, if aspell and hunspell are not installed, you can ignore all the flyspell error messages.

• Show ancient Chinese poem or quotes from random sources
• Install through OS package manager

Please note you can’t install fortune-zh through homebrew on macOS but there is a simple workaround:

• install fortune
• Download fortune-zh code from https://github.com/debiancn/fortune-zh
• Extract code and run make in its folder
• copy data files and the script named fortune-zh into corresponding folders which fortune is using. You may need edit the file fortune-zh before copying

• Required by emacs-w3m
• Install through OS package manager

You can insert (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'w3m) in ~/.gnus.el to force HTML mail be rendered by w3m instead of the default HTML rendering engine shr.

shr supports COLOR while w3m not.

But my w3m based utilities can open video/audio/image with the help of w3m. So your choice.

• Required by flymake-lua
• Install through OS package manager

• Required by flyspell
• hunspell is the alternative of aspell. So you need only one of them.
• Install through OS package manager
• For aspell, you may need its dictionary aspell-en
• I force the dictionary to “en_US” in ~/.emacs./lisp/init-spelling.el. You can modify it.
• I recommend aspell for programmers. Non-programmers find hunspell is better on typo correction

If you use hunspell, check my article. Please note the hunspell executable understands either unix format path or windows format path but not both. You need figure out hunspell version you are using.

You can set force-to-use-hunspell in init-spelling.el if you prefer hunspell.

This setup can spell check camel case words either using aspell or hunspell.

Aspell’s default personal English dictionary is $HOME/.aspell.en.pws. It’s content is like:

personal_ws-1.1 en 4
ABN
ACC
ACN
ACT

Hunspell’s default personal English dictionary is $HOME/.hunspell_en_US. The file format is same as aspell.

• Required by lisp slime
• Install through OS package manager

• Required by web-mode for syntax check and tidy.el html formatting
• Install through OS package manager

• Required by flymake-css
• Install node.js through OS package manager, then npm install -g csslint

• Required by org-mode to export org file to odt file when image embedded
• Install through OS package manager

• Required by org-mode to export org file to odt file
• Install through OS package manager

• Install node.js through OS package manager, then npm install -g jshint
• Required by js-mode
• I use js2-mode which does NOT need jshint

• Required by my clipboard command copy-to-x-clipboard and paste-from-x-clipboard under Linux
• Install through OS package manager

• Required by cpputils-cmake
• Install through OS package manager
• Please use out-of-source build tree when using CMake

• Required by cpputils-cmake, company-clang
• Install through OS package manager
• If you use cpputils-cmake and cmake, cpputils-cmake will do all the setup for you. You don’t need read next item! But please spend a few minutes to learn the basics of cmake! There is a one minute step-by-step-guide in README of cpputils-cmake to teach you how to use cmake.
• If you use company-clang, add (setq company-clang-arguments '("-I/example1/dir" "-I/example2/dir")) into ~/.emacs.d/init.el

• Required by markdown-preview from markdown-mode
• Install through OS package manager

• Required by flymake
• Install through OS package manager

• It creates tags file for code navigation and code completion
• Required by many tags related packages
• Install through OS package manager
• See How to use ctags in Emacs effectively

• Required by counsel-gtags
• It creates index files for code navigation and auto-completion
• Please read GNU Global manual to understand environment variables GTAGSLIBPATH and MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX
• Install through OS package manager

• Only the executable soffice is used for converting odt file into doc/pdf
• Conversion happens automatically when exporting org-mode to odt
• The conversion command is defined in variable org-export-odt-convert-processes
• Install through OS package manager

• Beautify javascript code
• Install pip through OS package manager, then pip install jsbeautifier

• syntax check Erlang through flymake
• Install from https://github.com/ten0s/syntaxerl

• Required by elpy which is python IDE
• At least pip install jedi flake8. Check elpy website for more tips.

• Required by sdcv.e
• Install through OS package manager
• Run curl http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/repo/pkgs/stardict-dic/stardict-dictd_www.dict.org_wn-2.4.2.tar.bz2/f164dcb24b1084e1cfa2b1cb63d590e6/stardict-dictd_www.dict.org_wn-2.4.2.tar.bz2 | tar jx -C ~/.stardict/dic to install dictionary

• Optionally used by M-x counsel-etags-grep to search text in files
• Run curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh in shell to install Rust then cargo install ripgrep
• Tweak environment variable PATH to let Emacs find ripgrep

Knowledge of Linux/Unix is required. At least you should understand the words like “environment variable”, “shell”, “stdin”, “stdout”, “man”, “info”.

Please read this tutorial at least for once.

At minimum you need know,

• What is Environment Variable
• What is Pipeline (Unix), Standard Streams

The purpose it to know how Emacs interacts with other command line programs.

Press C-h t in Emacs (“C” means Ctrl key, “M” means Alt key) to read bundled tutorial.

At minimum you need know:

• How to move cursor
• C-h v to describe variable
• C-h f to describe function
• C-h k to check function key binding

Org-mode is for notes-keeping and planning.

Please watch Carsten Dominik’s talk. It’s really simple. The only hot key to remember is Tab.

You can visit EmacsWiki for the solution. Newbies can ask for help at http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/.

Required for vim user,

• Finish vimtutor.
• Read https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil/blob/master/doc/evil.pdf

See Master Emacs in One Year.

I avoid overriding the original setup of third party command line program.

On Windows, you need install Cygwin which provides command line tools Emacs uses. Cygwin could be installed on any hard drive but it’s highly recommended don’t change it relative path to the root driver.

Install Ctags (Universal Ctags is better. But Exuberant Ctags is fine). On Windows you could install Ctags through Cygwin.

Run M-x cousnel-etags-find-ctags from counsel-etags to navigate code by using tags files created by ctags. Tags file will be automatically created/update when you start using `counsel-etags`.

Run M-x counsel-etags-grep to search text (grep) in project. Project root is automatically detected if you use open source version control software. Or else the parent directory of tags file is used.

Run M-x find-file-in-project-by-selected from find-file-in-project to find file in project. The project root is automatically detected if you use any popular open source version control software. Or else, you need only one line setup in .emacs like (setq ffip-project-root "~/proj1/").

The code auto completion works out of box by using tags file created by Ctags. So it means you need run counsel-etags at least once to fire up Ctags. company-etags from company-mode provides the candidates for auto completion. No manual setup is required. You can also grep in the directory ~/.emacs.d/lisp if you got any question on setup.

You don’t need remember key bindings. At the beginning, try `M-x my-command` (corresponding key binding is also displayed) instead.

Most key bindings are defined in ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-evil.el.

For example, (nvmap :prefix "," "bu" 'backward-up-list) means pressing “,bu” executes command backward-up-list.

The tutorials I recommended has enough information about commands.

Besides, ”How to be extremely efficient in Emacs” lists my frequently used commands.

Hydra is used to define key bindings when evil-mode is disabled. See ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-hydra.el for details.

You can always press C-c C-y anywhere to bring up default hydra menu.

SPC s s or M-x wg-create-workgrou to save windows layout. SPC l l or M-x my-wg-switch-workgroup to load windows layout.

You can customize my-term-program whose default value is /bin/bash. It’s used by ansi-term and multi-term.

Place your setup in ~/.custom.el.

It’s usable out of box if Ctags is installed

To navigate, M-x counsel-etags-find-tag-at-point.

To enable code auto-completion, M-x counsel-etags-scan-code at least once.

Optionally, you can add (add-hook 'after-save-hook 'counsel-etags-virtual-update-tags) into your .emacs to automatically update tags file.

No further setup is required.

Check https://emacsthemes.com/.

Write down the name of color theme (for example, molokai).

You can M-x counsel-load-theme to switch themes.

Or you can insert below code into end of ~/.custom.el or ~/.emacs.d/init.el,

;; Please note the color theme's name is "molokai"
(when (or (display-graphic-p)
          (string-match-p "256color"(getenv "TERM")))
  (load-theme 'molokai t))

You can also run M-x random-color-theme to load random color theme.

Start Emacs this way,

TERM=xterm-256color emacs -nw

Many third party plugins bundled in this setup have already provided all the features you needed. For example, if you use git, counsel-git-grep from package counsel/ivy works out of the box.

A generic grep program counsel-etags-grep is provided if you don’t use git. Since counsel-etags-grep is based on counsel/ivy, it also supports “multi-editing via Ivy”. You could read Nuclear weapon multi-editing via Ivy and Ag to get the idea.

Multi-edit workflow is optimized. After M-x counsel-etags-grep or pressing “,qq”, press C-c C-o C-x C-q to enable wgrep-mode. You can edit text (for example, delete lines) in wgrep-mode directly.

You can specify the ignore regex like !keyword1 in ivy. If you want to ignore multiple keywords, you must use syntax like !keyword1\|!keyword2. As I tested in counsel v0.9.1, non of its grep commands supports ignore syntax reliably. So I suggest using counsel-etags-grep instead.

I love all the packages from Oleh Krehel (AKA abo-abo). Every article from his blog is worth reading ten times.

You can input :keyword in ivy UI to search by Chinese Pinyin.

I use rjsx-mode with Emacs v25+. It’s based on js2-mode so it has excellent imenu support.

But web-mode v15+ is also very popular to edit jsx files.

In order to replace rjsx-mode with web-mode, you need search line (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.jsx\\'" . rjsx-mode)) in init-javascript.el and replace rjsx-mode with web-mode on that line.

I use modified version of git-gutter for now until my pull request is merged into official repository.

You can set git-gutter:exp-to-create-diff to make git gutter support other VCS (Perforce, for example),

(setq git-gutter:exp-to-create-diff
      (shell-command-to-string (format "p4 diff -du -db %s"
                                       (file-relative-name buffer-file-name))))

Please M-x multi-term.

If you want to use Zsh instead of Bash, please modify init-term-mode.el

Non-Chinese use unicode-fonts.

Chinese use chinese-fonts-setup.

They are not included in this setup. You need install them manually.

Synchronize from my stable setup which is updated every 6+ months:

git pull https://[email protected]/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git stable

Or latest setup:

git pull https://[email protected]/redguardtoo/emacs.d.git

You can revert commit:

# always start from the latest related commit
git revert commit-2014-12-01
git revert commit-2014-11-01

Learn basics. Then use my solution.

Please note paredit-mode is enabled when editing Lisp. Search “paredit cheat sheet” to learn its key bindings.

Comment out (require 'init-modeline) in init.el at first.

Other desktop applications may intercept the key bindings. For example, someone reported QQ on windows 8 can intercept “M-x”.

Press M-x org-version, then read corresponding online manual to setup.

For example, org-capture need your manual setup.

Please replace legacy Emacs 22 and ctags with the new versions.

The easiest way is change Environment variable PATH.

Some packages are so important to my workflow that they are locked.

Those packages are placed at ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp.

They will not be upgraded through ELPA unless you delete them at ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp at first.

Some variables are hard coded so you cannot M-x customize to modify them.

Here are the steps to change their values:

• Find the variable description by M-x customize
• For text “Company Clang Insert Arguments”, search company-clang-insert-argument in ~/.emacs.d/lisp/
• You will find ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-company.el and modify company-clang-insert-argument

BTW, please read my comments above the code at first.

Keep pressing C-M-j to ignore candidates and open/save files using current input.

You can also press M-o to apply other action on selected file. See https://oremacs.com/2015/07/23/ivy-multiaction/ for details.

I strongly suggest Cygwin version of Emacs. But native windows version is OK if it knows how to find the third party command line programs. Cygwin provides most of them by default. Please add C:\Cygwin64\bin to environment variable PATH so Emacs can detect the program automatically.

By default, environment variable HOME points to the directory C:\Users\<username> on Windows 7+. You need copy the folder .emacs.d into that directory. Or you can setup HOME.

• Instead of M-x yas-expand or pressing TAB key, you can press M-j instead.
• Yasnippet works out of box. But you can M-x my-yas-reload-all to force Yasnippet compile all the snippets. If you run my-yas-reload-all once, you need always to run it when new snippets is added. The purpose of my-yas-reload-all is to optimize the Emacs startup only. IMO, it’s not worth the effort.
• You can add your snippets into ~/.emacs.d/snippets/.
• Run grep -rns --exclude‘.yas*’ ‘key:’ *= in ~/.emacs.d/snippets to see my own snippets

Locale must be UTF-8 compatible. For example, as I type locale in shell, I got the output “zh_CN.UTF-8”.

Run below command in shell:

http_proxy=http://yourname:[email protected]:8080 emacs -nw

Try https://github.com/XX-net/XX-Net. Run command http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:8087 emacs -nw in shell after starting XX-Net.

If you use Gnus for email, check init-gnus.el and read my Gnus tutorial.

Some package cannot be downloaded automatically because of network problem.

You could M-x package-refresh-content and restart Emacs. the package will be installed automatically.

By default, packages from GNU ELPA are NOT available. Search the line “uncomment below line if you need use GNU ELPA” in init-elpa.el if you want to access GNU ELPA.

For example, flycheck requires packages from GNU ELPA.

By default EVIL (Vim emulation in Emacs) is used. Comment out line containing (require 'init-evil) in init.el to unload it.

It’s defined in ~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-evil.el. Press C-z to switch between Emacs and Vim key bindings.

Please read its PDF manual before using evil-mode.

I assume you are using company-mode. Other packages have similar setup.

There are many ways to scan the C++ source files. The Emacs Lisp code and command line programs to scan the C++ files are company backends. company-clang is a popular backend because Clang is good at processing C++.

If you use clang to parse the C++ code:

• Make sure code is syntax correct
• assign reasonable value into company-clang-arguments

Here is sample code:

(setq company-clang-arguments '("-I/home/myname/projs/test-cmake" "-I/home/myname/projs/test-cmake/inc"))

In “friendly” Visual C++, similar setup is required.

You can use other company backends instead of company-clang. For example, you can use company-gtags and GNU Global instead. See Emacs as C++ IDE, easy way for details.

Other backends produce less precise results but are more efficient and easier to setup.

It’s similar to C++ setup. You can use company as frontend. But backend is the key. For example, you can’t use company-clang for PHP because Clang can’t handle PHP. But GNU Global supports PHP, so you can use company-gtags instead.

For languages GNU Global doesn’t support, you can always fall back to company-etags and Ctags by using regular expression. Regular expressions could be placed in ~/.ctags.

You can also complete line by M-x eacl-complete-line and complete multi-lines statement by M-x eacl-complete-statement.

Run M-x toggle-input-method to toggle input method pyim.

If your personal dictionary ~/.eim/personal.pyim exists, it will be used.

You can M-x my-pyim-export-dictionary to export your personal words into personal.pyim. Check init-chinese-pyim.el for more information.

Run below commands in shell:

mkdir -p ~/tmp;
curl http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-24.4.tar.gz | tar xvz -C ~/tmp/emacs-24.4
cd ~/tmp/emacs-24.4;
mkdir -p ~/myemacs/24.4;
rm -rf ~/myemacs/24.4/*;
./configure --prefix=~/myemacs/24.4 --without-x --without-dbus --without-sound && make && make install

Feel free to replace 24.4 with other version number.

Insert below code into ~/.emacs or =~/.custom.el,

;; Use en_US locale to format time.
;; if not set, the OS locale is used.
(setq system-time-locale "C")

~/.emacs.d/init.el is the main file. It includes all the other *.el files.

~/.emacs.d/lisp/init-elpa.el defines what packages will be installed from MELPA.

Packages are installed into ~/.emacs.d/elpa/.

I also manually download and extract some packages into ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/. Packages in ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/ are not visible to the package manager.

My own snippets is at ~/.emacs.d/snippets.

Other directories don’t matter.

• Install Emacs 26
• Install terminals supporting true color. I suggest mintty on Windows, terminator on Linux, iTerm2 on macOS
• Setup and start Emacs

Version 1.2 of this setup is the last version to support Emacs v23.

Here are the steps to use that setup:

• Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/1.2.zip
• Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/1.2.zip
• Follow the section Install stable version in easiest way but skip the download steps

Version 2.6 is the last version to support Emacs 24.3.

Download https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d/archive/2.6.zip and https://github.com/redguardtoo/myelpa/archive/2.6.zip and you are good to go.

Support will be dropped on 2019

• Never turn off any bundled mode if it’s on by default. Future version of Emacs may assume it’s on. Tweak its flag in mode hook instead!
• Git skills are extremely useful. Please read the chapters “Git Basics”, “Git Branching”, “Git Tools” from Pro Git
• You can run optimize-emacs-startup to compile “*.el” under ~/.emacs.d/lisp/

• Please check EmacsWiki and my FAQ at first
• If the issue is still NOT resolved, restart Emacs with option ---debug-init, run M-x toggle-debug-on-error in Emacs. Try to reproduce the issue
• Send error messages to the original developer if it’s third party package issue
• If you are sure it’s my issue, file bug report at https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d. Don’t email me!

Bug report should include details (OS, Emacs version …).