Emacs Configuration

Jessica Hamrick
[email protected]

Tested on versions:

• GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.1.0, NS apple-appkit-1265.19) of 2014-04-06
• GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.4.2) of 2014-02-22

Installing

Clone this repository, and then run the bootstrap.sh script. This will copy all of the necessary files to ~/.emacs and ~/.emacs.d. Note that if these files exist for you already, this will overwrite those files.

Once you have run the bootstrap script, start Emacs (make sure you are connected to the internet when you do this for the first time). It will install el-get and all of the other plugins listed in the next section. This initial installation may take a while, so be patient.

Dependencies

For some of the plugins to work, you will need to have some external dependencies installed, such as Python, IPython, git, etc. If the installation gives you an error, it might mean you are missing a required dependency that el-get doesn't install.

Emacs plugins

This configuration installs several plugins using el-get. These plugins are specified in .emacs.d/settings/el-get-settings.el, and are also listed below:

• auctex -- LaTeX plugin
• ein -- IPython notebook plugin
• jedi -- general Python support
• pydoc-info -- Python documentation
• auto-complete -- auto completion
• popup -- visual popup (e.g., for auto completion)
• color-theme-solarized -- the solarized color theme
• magit -- git plugin
• markdown-mode -- support for Markdown files
• matlab-mode -- support Matlab files
• nxhtml (MuMaMo)
• scss-mode -- support for SCSS files
• nyan-mode -- silly mode that renders a nyan cat to display how far you are through a file
• helm -- completion and selection narrowing framework
• helm-descbinds -- describe keybindings using helm

Gotchas

Here are some issues I or others have run into when installing this configuration.

Version control systems

To install all the plugins above, you need to have several different version control systems installed, including hg, git, bzr, and cvs.

Trouble building AUCTeX

If you get the following error:

error: el-get: ./autogen.sh el-get could not build auctex [./autogen.sh]

There are a few possible causes. Try these steps:

1. Make sure you have automake and texlive-full installed (if you are on Ubuntu) or MacTeX (if you are on Mac).
2. Try running emacs from the command line (it could be an issue with not finding the right path).
3. If that doesn't work, run emacs from the command line with the --debug-init flag. This will give you more information about the error, and possibly point you towards the solution.

No such file or directory: pycheckers

pycheckers is a little script to check that your Python code conforms to the PEP8 style guide using the pep8 and pyflakes Python packages.

If you do not want this functionality, you can comment out the block of code in python-settings.el that starts with "pyflakes flymake integration". Otherwise, read on.

1. In your ~/.bashrc, add $HOME/bin to your $PATH environment variable like so:

export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

2. Create a file in ~/bin/pycheckers with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash

pyflakes "$1"
pep8 --ignore=E261 --repeat "$1"
true

3. Make it executable with chmod +x ~/bin/pycheckers.

4. Make sure you have pep8 and pyflakes installed (run pip install pep8 pyflakes).

5. Now it should work! If not, please submit a bug report and let me know.

Tramp is timing out

If you get the error tramp ssh: connect to host c port 22: Operation timed out and you are running OS X Mavericks with Emacs installed using Homebrew, then this is probably due to the Mavericks upgrade. Try reinstalling Emacs through Homebrew and remove the folder ~/.emacs.d/el-get (note: this will remove all your el-get plugins, and they will need to be reinstalled).