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philosophy | goals | for whom? | screenshots | documentation | contribute | achievements | FAQ

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Quick Install:

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

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Features
  • Batteries Included
  • Nice UI
  • Excellent ergonomics
  • Convenient and Mnemonic Key Bindings
    • Great Documentation
• Prerequisites
  • Emacs
    • Linux distros
    • OS X
    • Windows
• Install
  • Spacemacs logo
• Update
  • Update notification
  • Rollback
• Configuration
  • Configuration layers
  • Dotfile (.spacemacs)
• Learning Spacemacs
  • Editing Styles
  • The leader keys
  • Evil-tutor
  • Universal argument
  • Configuration layers and Package discovery
  • Key bindings discovery
  • Describe functions
• How-To's
• Contributions
• License
• Special Credits
• Supporting Spacemacs
• FAQ
  • Common
  • Windows
  • OS X

Introduction

You are a Vim user ?

You do not need to know Emacs to use Spacemacs!

You are an Emacs user ?

You do not need to know Vim to use Spacemacs!

Since version 0.101.0 and later Spacemacs totally abolishes the frontiers between Vim and Emacs. The user can now choose his/her preferred editing style and enjoy all the Spacemacs features.

Even better, it is possible to dynamically switch between the two styles seamlessly which makes it possible for programmers with different styles to do seat pair programming using the same editor.

Since switching between the two styles is so simple, Spacemacs is the perfect setup to learn the "other way" or even crazier, to get the best of both worlds by developing your own hybrid style.

Spacemacs is also a user-friendly and well-documented Emacs kit that integrates the best Emacs packages out there. It uses Evil Mode to combine the ergonomic editing features of Vim and Emacs with the flexibility of a lisp powered engine.

If you are already an experienced Emacs user, you will appreciate the elegantly customized system and carefully curated, tightly integrated, set of packages.

Spacemacs is currently in beta, and contributions are very welcome.

Features

Batteries Included

Spacemacs integrates hundreds of ready-to-use packages thanks to a community-driven approach.

Those packages are grouped in layers and their configuration follow a set of rules gathered in CONVENTIONS.org.

Visit the Documentation

Nice UI

Spacemacs looks good. It ships with quality themes and a beautiful mode-line.

Excellent ergonomics

Spacemacs is designed around the Evil Mode and a leader key. All the packages are customized to integrate seamlessly with Evil.

Spacemacs also define micro-states to group related commands. These micro-states reduce the keystrokes needed to issue repetitive commands and reduce the number of keyboard bindings to learn.

Convenient and Mnemonic Key Bindings

Spacemacs organizes key bindings into mnemonic groups. For example, commands to operate on the buffer are prefixed by <SPC> b, and commands to operate on the project are under <SPC> p.

Great Documentation

Most of Spacemacs' features, key bindings, and configuration options are extensively documented.

If you need help, ask your question in the Gitter Chat and a member of the community will help you out.

If you prefer IRC, connect to the Gitter Chat IRC server and join the #syl20bnr/spacemacs channel.

Prerequisites

Emacs

Spacemacs is tested with Emacs 24.3 and 24.4 and therefore should boot on all the major OSes where these versions are installable.

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

Linux distros

Install Emacs from the package manager of your favorite Linux distribution.

OS X

The recommended version for OS X is emacs-mac-port. It can be installed via homebrew with the following commands:

$ brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport
$ brew install emacs-mac --with-spacemacs-icon

(The with-spacemacs-icon option uses the official spacemacs logo for the app bundle.)

The default key handling is different from the official OS X port. To correct this you can add the osx layer to your dotfile layer list:

(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(osx))

Note that the emacs-mac-port server behaves differently than the regular Emacs server. Details can be found on the emacs-mac-port README.

Windows

Good quality builds can be found on this page. It is recommended to install the most stable build.

Be sure to declare a environment variable named HOME and pointing to your user directory C:\Users\<username>. Then you can clone Spacemacs in this directory.

Sometimes you'll get the following error when you first start Emacs:

The directory ~/.emacs.d/server is unsafe

To fix it change the owner of the directory ~/.emacs.d/server:

• from Properties select the Tab “Security”,
• select the button “Advanced”,
• select the Tab “Owner”
• change the owner to your account name

Source: Stackoverflow

For efficient searches we recommend to install pt (the platinum searcher). pt version 1.7.7 or higher is required.

Install

1. If you have an existing Emacs configuration, back it up:

   cd ~
   mv .emacs.d .emacs.bak
   

2. Clone this repository with its submodules:

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

   master is the stable branch and is regularly updated. Switch to the develop branch if you want to use the bleeding-edge version.

3. Launch Emacs. Spacemacs will automatically install the packages it requires.

4. Restart Emacs to complete the installation.

If the mode-line turns red then be sure to visit the troubleshooting guide and consult the FAQ.

Spacemacs logo

If you are using Ubuntu and Unity then you can add the Spacemacs logo by following the instructions here.

If you're on a mac and didn't install emacs with the spacemacs logo, you can apply it to the app bundle after installation. An .icns version of the logo by Nasser Alshammari is available from his github. You can paste this into the app bundle to get the spacemacs logo on your emacs. More detailed instructions if you've not done this before.

Update

Spacemacs currently requires manual updates using the following procedure:

1. Update Emacs packages by clicking (press RET) on the [Update] link of the starting page.

2. Close Emacs and update the git repository:

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

3. Restart Emacs to complete the upgrade.

Update notification

For convenience an indicator is displayed in the mode-line whenever a new version of Spacemacs is available.

       Symbol                     | Description

:------------------------------------:|---------------------------------- | < 3 releases behind | < 5 releases behind | >= 5 releases behind

Note: A feature allowing update by merely clicking on the indicator will be implemented soon!

Rollback

Should anything go wrong during an update, you can rollback ELPA packages to a previous version. Click (press RET) on the [Rollback] link of the startup page, choose a rollback slot.

Rollback slot names are dates with the following format YYYY-MM-DD_HH.MM.SS. The date corresponds to the date of an update. The most recent slots are listed first.

Configuration

Spacemacs divides its configuration into self-contained units called configuration layers. These layers are stacked on top of each other to achieve a custom configuration.

Spacemacs uses the dotfile ~/.spacemacs to control which layers to load. Within this file you may also generally configure certain features.

Configuration layers

A configuration layer is a directory containing at least the following files:

• packages.el: Defines and configures packages to be downloaded from Emacs package repositories using package.el
• extensions.el: Configures packages which cannot be downloaded with package.el such as built-in Emacs features and git submodules.

If you already have your own Emacs configuration you can move it to your own layer.

The following command creates a layer in the private directory:

<SPC> : configuration-layer/create-layer RET

Any configuration layers you create must be explicitly loaded in ~/.spacemacs.

Note: For your privacy, the contents of the private directory are not under source control. See the documentation for a discussion on how to manage your private configuration.

Dotfile (.spacemacs)

As mentioned .spacemacs controls which configuration layers to load and is also a means to customizing Spacemacs.

The following command will create a .spacemacs file in your home directory:

<SPC> : dotspacemacs/install RET

...to open the installed dotfile:

<SPC> f e d

...to load some configuration layers using the variable dotspacemacs-configuration-layers:

;; List of configuration layers to load.
dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(auto-completion smex)

Some configuration layers support configuration variables to expose granular control over layer-specific features, git layer being one such example. Variables can be directly set within dotspacemacs-configuration-layers like so:

;; List of configuration layers to load.
dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(auto-completion
                                    (git :variables
                                         git-magit-status-fullscreen t)
                                    smex)

At anytime you can apply the changes made to the dotfile or layers without restarting Spacemacs by pressing SPC f e R.

The comments in this file contain further information about how to customize Spacemacs. See the dotfile configuration section of the documentation for more details.

Learning Spacemacs

Editing Styles

Spacemacs can be used by Vim users or Emacs users by setting the dotspacemacs-editing-style variable to 'vim or 'emacs in the dotfile ~/.spacemacs.

The leader keys

Spacemacs key bindings use a leader key which is by default bound to SPC (space bar) in vim editing style and M-m in emacs style.

You can change it by setting the variable dotspacemacs-leader-key if you use the vim style or dotspacemacs-emacs-leader-key if you use the emacs style (these variables must be set in the file ~/.spacemacs).

For simplicity the documentation always refers to the leader key as SPC.

There is secondary leader key called the major-mode leader key which is set to , by default. This key is a shortcut for SPC m where all the major-mode specific commands are bound.

Evil-tutor

If you are willing to learn the Vim key bindings (highly recommended since you can benefit from them even in emacs style), press SPC h T to begin an Evil-adapted Vimtutor.

Universal argument

In vim editing style the universal argument defaults to <SPC> u instead of C-u because the latter is used to scroll up as in Vim.

Configuration layers and Package discovery

By using helm-spacemacs with SPC f e h you can quickly search for a package and get the name of the layers using it.

You can also easily go to the README.org of a layer or go to the initialization function of a package.

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 bindings list to those prefixed with SPC, type a pattern like this regular expression:

SPC\ b

which would list all buffer related bindings.

Describe functions

Describe functions are powerful Emacs introspection commands to get information about functions, variables, modes etc. These commands are bound thusly:

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

How-To's

Some quick how-to's are compiled in the HOWTOs.org file.

Contributions

Spacemacs needs you!

We especially need to create more configuration layers that, for instance, bring support for new languages.

If you are ready to contribute please begin by consulting the contribution guidelines and conventions, thanks!

License

The license is GPLv3 for all parts specific to Spacemacs, this includes:

• the initialization and core files
• all the layer files.
• the documentation

Special Credits

Spacemacs logo by Nasser Alshammari released under a Creative Commons license.

Supporting Spacemacs

The best way to support Spacemacs is to contribute to it either by reporting bugs, helping the community on the Gitter Chat or sending pull requests.

If you want to show your support financially you can buy a drink to the maintainer by clicking on the Paypal badge.

Thank you !

FAQ

Common

1. Which version of Spacemacs am I running ? The version is displayed on the upper right corner of the loading screen. You may also just type SPC f e v.

2. What is the official pronunciation of Spacemacs ? As it is written, that is space then macs.

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

4. The Spacemacs banner is ugly, what should I do ? Install the default font supported by Spacemacs or choose a fixed width font. More information in the font section of the documentation.

5. The powerline separators are ugly, how can I fix them ? Use the property :powerline-scale of the variable dotspacemacs-default-font. See font section documentation for more details.

6. The powerline separators have no anti-aliasing, what can I do ? Emacs powerline uses XMP images to draw the separators in a graphical environment. You can have anti-aliasing if you use the utf8 separator. Note that by default the utf8 separator is used in a terminal. See the powerline section in the documentation.

7. Why is after-init-hook not executed ? Don't launch Spacemacs with emacs -q -l init.el command. This command will run the hooked function in after-init-hook before the evaluation of the passed -l init.el file.

Windows

1. Why do the fonts look crappy on Windows ? You can install MacType on Windows to get very nice looking fonts. It is also recommended to disable smooth scrolling on Windows.

2. Why is there no Spacemacs logo in the startup buffer ? A GUI build of emacs supporting image display is required. You can follow the instructions here. Alternatively you can download binaries of emacs with image support included such as this one.

OS X

1. Why are the powerline colors not correct on OS X ? This is a known issue as of Emacs 24.4 due to ns-use-srgb-colorspace defaulting to true. It is recommended to use the emacs-mac-port build. See the install OSX section for more details.