dotfiles VS crafted-emacs

Check out https://github.com/daviwil/dotfiles and the SystemCrafters YouTube channel and Github page. Lots of good stuff there for full system configuration.

Then check out the System Crafters website. There is a youtube channel, but David Wilson's notes and his dotfiles are quicker to navigate if you know what you're looking for.

I was watching some videos and saw this https://github.com/daviwil/dotfiles/blob/master/Emacs.org, which is HUUUGE. Is there some other resource that I can just start with one piece/package at a time and keep adding more slowly?

Explanation for not using sudo -E: https://github.com/daviwil/dotfiles/issues/11

I'm trying to create a configuration with a base-system module with multiple machine configurations deriving from it, based on the example shared by David Wilson in his github repo: https://github.com/daviwil/dotfiles

You should avoid using sudo -E or your home directory is slowly gonna fill up with root-owned files.

Lisp take a while to learn, but you really don't need too much knowledge. I would recommend using blocks of code from others' configs as a beginner.

While watching a Systems Crafters playlist about emacs I decided I wanted to checkout his configuration to see if it had anything I would find useful. As his style of development is different from mine I did not find a whole lot, but I did find something useful. In his init.el he has a section that moves files like places to a different directory to keep his ~/.emacs.d clean. As I keep my ~/.emacs.d directory as a symbolic link to my dotfiles repository I immediately added this to my configuration; however, it does not seem to work at least as I expected it to. Within my init.el I have a block of code that is copied from his, but modified slightly to create ~/.cache/emacs if it does not already exist, and then apply the changes to where these files should be stored. I don't seem to get any errors, but this also does not seem to change where those files get stored. Am I misunderstanding what his block of code does?

Keep an eye on Crafted Emacs which has a v2Beta release branch. It's been evolving. The v2Beta is a rewrite. It aims to provide a minimalist leg up on vanilla Emacs for new Emacs users. It's goal is to take you from first steps to a point where you have learned a great deal and built your configuration. Then you may be comfortable ditching the Crafted Emacs boilerplate configuration entirely. Think of it as a starter kit. Follow SystemCrafters on YouTube (live stream mostly) & Matrix (they are leaving Discord). Despite the live stream being lengthy, there is much to be learned as you bear witness to David figuring things out. Over time, you pickup on those techniques such as looking up a variable state, reviewing functions, evaluating snippets of Elisp in real time, etc. Also recommend, Mastering Emacs as a fantastic ebook with free updates. Once 29.1 ships, no doubt, there will be a free update to the ebook.

I'd recommend you have a look at crafted-emacs. It's an example of how far Emacs can actually go without third-party packages. Then you can add minimal packages (completion and specific tool integrations) to further enhance the experience.

For me it's quite stable except some issues I had with vertico. Anyways, I first started to rewrite my doom config into plain vanilla emacs (with org mode literate configs), and then I discovered crafted which allowed me to remove some code with commonly set sane defaults, e.g. stuff from https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs/blob/master/modules/crafted-defaults.el.

I have been surprised at how many people have so ardently defended only using built-ins and raw package.el and their own janky ensure methods when use-package was available and did it all better. And, it even lets you configure Emacs itself (not just packages), as well as seamlessly letting you try different package management tools like straight.el. Getting it into Emacs itself hopefully makes this a more prevalent way of showing users how to craft their own config.

If you need a staring point for configuring there's some nice light ones like emacs-bedrock and crafted-emacs, and also some fully pre-configured Emacs distributions that you can choose from (though those look harder to configure to one's personal needs to me, but I haven't tried them so wouldn't know).

I'll second https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs

And if you find yourself between the two extremes, perhaps https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs