Getting started with an editor like Vi or Emacs isn’t too easy in the beginning, so I’m going to show you what packages I’m currently using to write code in Javascript, Ruby and a little bit in Scala.
My emacs configuration is very simple and it was based on Emacs Prelude. My setup can be found in my repo at https://github.com/rlazoti/emacs.d and you also can see there a list with my useful shortcuts that I use constantly.
There are many ways to install Emacs, you could install it from the sources or maybe using a package manager. I’m going to show the way that worked better for me. ;) Let’s see it…
I installed on the Mac OS a ‘mac port’ of emacs 24. I did it with Homebrew but it’s possible to download a version directly of here. To install with Homebrew do:
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brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport
And then
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brew install emacs-mac
That’s it! It should be ready to use.
Repositories
Emacs 24 included a package manager called package.el and it already include a repository called ELPA, but it’s possible to use multiple repositories. In fact I use just one more repository called MELPA.
Packages
These are the main packages I use:
ag.el: It’s a front-end to ag. Basically I use it to search for a term in all files of a project.
autocomplete: An auto-completion extension for Emacs.
fiplr: It allows you to locate and open files deep within a complex directory tree, using fuzzy matching.
flymake: An on-the-fly syntax checker for GNU Emacs.
flyspell: It enables on-the-fly spell checking in Emacs.