spacemacs/README.md


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Quick Install:

git clone --recursive http://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.d

Introduction

Spacemacs is a user-friendly and well-documented Emacs Advanced kit.

Advanced means here that it heavily and happily performs non-trivial tweaks and customization in order to make itself easy to use and unique.

Advanced does not mean that you have to be an advanced Emacs user, beginners are welcome and encouraged to use Spacemacs since it provides a simple architecture to contribute changes and hack others contributions.

Its status is beta for now, essentially because of the configuration system that is not yet finished but already usable.

And now, to use a well known catch line from Emacs Live:

M-x start-spacing !

Features

Convenient and Mnemonic Key Bindings

Spacemacs organizes key bindings by mnemonic namespaces. If you are looking for commands to operate on your buffer, they are right under <SPC> b, if you want to operate on your project, then it is <SPC> p, etc...

There is no need to learn convoluted Emacs chords, everything you need is under bindings that are easy to type and easy to remember.

Excellent Evil Support

Spacemacs comes with Vim modal editing through Evil Mode. Everything is designed with it in mind from the key bindings to the user interface. This includes fancy goodies like a micro-state for editing all occurences of a symbol and extra packages like ace-jump,evil-lisp-state and evil-nerd-commenter.

Batteries Included

Comes with configuration for hundreds of packages that make it fantastic out of the box. Many languages like Python, Ruby, Scala, R, SCSS, Elixir and Javascript come with modes, configuration and convenient key bindings. It also comes with Git support, project management and auto-completion. And all of this is optimized and lazy-loaded so you still get fast boot times!

And if that isn't enough you can use community contributed configuration layers for nice configurations of packages that aren't in the default distribution.

Great Documentation

Most Spacemacs features come with extensive documentation including key bindings, configuration options and explanations for beginners. And if you can't find the answers you need, ask your question in the Gitter Chat and a member of the community will help you out.

Visit the Documentation

Nice UI

Spacemacs is designed to look nice in a minimal and functional way. It comes with good theme support and a highly customized Powerline. The Powerline includes features like quick window switching numbers, Evil mode colors, and nice mode icons.

Prerequisites

Spacemacs is tested with Emacs 24.3 and 24.4. It should boot on all the major OSes where these versions can be installed.

Some modes require third-party tools that you'll have to install via your favorite package manager.

Install

1. Backup your current ~/.emacs.d and clone the repo with the submodules:

   cd ~ mv .emacs.d .emacs.bak git clone --recursive http://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.d

master is a stable branch, if you want the "bleeding edge" checkout the develop branch.

2. Launch Emacs, the first time a bunch of packages will be downloaded and installed. When the package installation is complete restart Emacs and Spacemacs should be ready to use.

In case of failure see troubleshoot section in documentation.

Update

For now the update of Spacemacs is manual.

1. It is important to first update the Emacs packages. In Emacs:

<SPC> a P <wait> U x y <wait> y

For more information about the package list buffer refer to Using the package list buffer of the documentation.

2. Close Emacs and update the git repository:

$ git pull --rebase
$ git submodule sync; git submodule update

Then restart Emacs.

Configuration

Configuration layers

Spacemacs is based on configuration layers. To create your own configuration layer:

<SPC> : config-system/create-layer RET

After entering a name, a layer skeleton will be created in the private directory where you'll find the following files:

• packages.el to list the elpa packages
• exentsions.el for any other package that is not available in a elpa repository.

The private directory is ignored by Git.

To use your newly created configuration layer, add it to your ~/.spacemacs file (see next section).

Note that this approach leaves your layer not source controlled. To get more info on the different approaches to manage your layers, refer to the Managing private configuration layers section of the documentation.

Dotfile ~/.spacemacs

Spacemacs has a convenient dotfile. You have to install it by invoking the following command inside Emacs:

<SPC> : dotspacemacs/install RET

Refers directly to the file ~/.spacemacs to get documentation or navigate to the dotfile configuration section of DOCUMENTATION.md.

Learning Spacemacs

Universal argument

In spacemacs the universal argument is by default on <SPC> u instead of C-u which is used to scroll up as in Vim.

Key bindings discovery

Thanks to guide-key, whenever a prefix command is pressed (like <SPC>) a buffer appears after one second listing the possible keys for this prefix.

It is also possible to search for specific key bindings by pressing:

<SPC> ?

To narrow the list to Spacemacs key bindings starting with prefix <SPC>, set the pattern to something like the regular expression:

`SPC\ b`

The example above will list all the buffer related bindings.

Describe functions

Describe functions are powerful Emacs introspection commands to get information about functions, variables, modes and so on.

These functions are accessible with the following bindings:

Key Binding	Description
<SPC> h d f	describe-function
<SPC> h d k	describe-key
<SPC> h d m	describe-mode
<SPC> h d v	describe-variable

Contributions

Spacemacs needs you!

Especially to grow the number of configuration layers, for instance to support new languages.

If you are ready to contribute please consult the contribution guidelines first.

FAQ

• Why manually installed packages with package-install are automatically deleted by Spacemacs when it starts ? To declare new packages you have to create a new configuration layer, see the quick start guide here.