use-package VS helm

Another way would be to redefine parts of the bind-key macro or its use-package support functions

The package-install call installs use-package that provides a utility of the same name to make it easier to manage packages. It's admittedly a little overkill for this specific config, but it's a cheap investment that sets you up for later success.

Granted, the Doom macro makes your code looks nice and compact. But you can get very close to that just by using do-list and define-key together. Or by using the bind-key.el package, which is included with Use-package.

> Deps is well documented.

> The issue I personally found is that I needed to look at a bunch of OS project's deps.edn to see how people commonly structure things. Other than that it is a simple tool.

This strikes me as a contradiction, because if it was well documented you wouldn’t need to look at other people’s configs to see how to use it.

My experience with deps.edn is that every time I start a project and make a deps.edn file, I immediately draw a blank and don’t know how to structure it, so I open ones from other projects to start lifting stuff out of them.

I still don’t know how to reliably configure a project to use nrepl or socket repl without just using an editor plugin. I definitely have no idea how to use those in conjunction with a tool like reveal.

To me, none of that is simple. Simple would be like Emacs’ use-package. With that I know how to add dependencies, specify keybinds, and do initialization and configuration off the top of my head. And it has really nice documentation with tons of examples.

https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package

Since you are doing code development, the first things to go for would be setting up your emacs packaging (installing use-package and melpa (use-package's documentation covers this) so you have more packages to choose from (do be careful to not just pick things willy nilly but research them a bit first)) and then setting up lsp-mode. lsp-mode lets you use LSP servers for the specific programming languages you work with in a somewhat unified fashion. You then need to install and setup the LSP servers for the languages you use, and possibly install language specific Emacs packages as support (note, Emacs has builtin functionality for many).

I'm using use-package as my package manager and the package ligature for the ligatures.

I have been crafting my emacs config for about 10 years. I started with vanilla and intentionally stayed away from frameworks. About two years ago I declared config bankruptcy and went down for a rewrite using use-package and straight.

ref: https://github.com/radian-software/straight.el https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package

use-package! is a macro over use-package, and respect its syntax, with a few additions. Useful reference on use-package keywords.

(setq inhibit-startup-message t) (setq visible-bell t) (setq make-backup-files nil) ; Disable the creation of ~ files (setq auto-save-default nil) ;; stop creating those #auto-save# files (setq display-line-numbers-mode t) ;(scroll-bar-mode -1) ; Disable visible scrollbar. Only for visual GUI ;(tool-bar-mode -1) ; Disable the toolbar. Only for visual GUI ;(tooltip-mode -1) ; Disable tooltips (menu-bar-mode -1) ; Disable the menu bar. Only for visual GUI ;(set-fringe-mode 10) ;(setq visible-bell t) ; Mac OSX specific ;mac-function-modifier ;mac-control-modifier) ;mac-command-modifier ;mac-option-modifier ;mac-right-command-modifier ;mac-right-control-modifier ;mac-right-option-modifier ;; key bindings (when (eq system-type 'darwin) ;; mac specific settings (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8) (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8) (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8) (setq mac-command-modifier 'meta) (setq mac-control-modifier 'control) (global-set-key [kp-delete] 'delete-char) ;; sets fn-delete to be right-delete ) ;; ORG Mode (global-set-key (kbd "C-c l") #'org-store-link) (global-set-key (kbd "C-c a") #'org-agenda) (global-set-key (kbd "C-c c") #'org-capture) ;; packages (require 'package) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")) ;; Comment/uncomment this line to enable MELPA Stable if desired. See `package-archive-priorities` ;; and `package-pinned-packages`. Most users will not need or want to do this. ;;(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t) (package-initialize) ;; LSP-mode config (setq package-selected-packages '(lsp-mode yasnippet lsp-treemacs helm-lsp projectile hydra flycheck company avy which-key helm-xref dap-mode)) (when (cl-find-if-not #'package-installed-p package-selected-packages) (package-refresh-contents) (mapc #'package-install package-selected-packages)) ;; sample `helm' configuration use https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/ for details (helm-mode) (require 'helm-xref) (define-key global-map [remap find-file] #'helm-find-files) (define-key global-map [remap execute-extended-command] #'helm-M-x) (define-key global-map [remap switch-to-buffer] #'helm-mini) (which-key-mode) (add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'lsp) (add-hook 'c++-mode-hook 'lsp) (lsp-treemacs-sync-mode 1) (setq gc-cons-threshold (* 100 1024 1024) read-process-output-max (* 1024 1024) treemacs-space-between-root-nodes nil company-idle-delay 0.0 company-minimum-prefix-length 1 lsp-idle-delay 0.1) ;; clangd is fast (with-eval-after-load 'lsp-mode (add-hook 'lsp-mode-hook #'lsp-enable-which-key-integration) (require 'dap-cpptools) (yas-global-mode)) ;; theme (load-theme 'modus-vivendi t)

Oh wow wow wow! I just checked your commit on the repository. That's so amazing. I really appreciate that. And I also found a convenient donation link.

Next you "only" have to remember (elisp) function names. "Completion UIs" like ivy/counsel, icomplete, helm or vertico/consult, give you a nice auto completion list on M-x (choose the one of them, you like the most). Some of those Completion UIs will display existing keybindings and a short documentation for commands, near the auto complete candidates. So you will start to remember more keybindings without "learning sessions", just because invoking functions via keybindings is much faster (more convenient).

I use imenu, and helm-imenu to filter out the list interactively. Instead of scrolling through, you "jump" to an item via completion like helm-imenu, which filters all headings interactively in real-time as you type.

I personally use Helm, so I can manage all files (open, delete, copy, rename, etc) all from completing prompt directly, I don't need to open Dired for that.

Helm 1.2 release was in September 2011: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/releases/tag/v1.2

I updated helm recently and when trying to use it after startup I was hitting "Defining as dynamic an already lexical var" . debugger showed me it was due to `ffap-machine-p-local` not being defined yet, digging into helm-lib.el i found that it is due to the ffap let bindings added recently to `helm-guess-filename-at-point` - the first one was to address this issue https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2574 and more recently two more ffaps were let bound. I can fix by adding `(require 'ffap)` in the helm `use-package` `:config` -- wondering if this is the recommended way or if it might be something worth living inside helm-lib.el near the top where it requires cl-lib already?

Related to https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/discussions/2577

Yes, Helm. Probably others like Embark.