Prelude is an Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the default Emacs experience. Prelude alters a lot of the default settings, bundles a plethora of additional packages and adds its own core library to the mix. The final product offers an easy to use Emacs configuration for Emacs newcomers and lots of additional power for Emacs power users.
Prelude is compatible ONLY with GNU Emacs 24.x. In general you're advised to always run Prelude with the latest Emacs - currently 24.3.
You can now power up your Emacs, sit back and enjoy Prelude, forgetting about the rest of this manual.
There are two environment variables you can use to control the source repository and the installation directory. To change the installation directory:
export PRELUDE_URL="https://github.com/benquike/prelude.git" && curl -L https://github.com/benquike/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh | shNote that the installer will back up any existing .emacs file or
.emacs.d since it will unpack Prelude's code in .emacs.d. If
you're doing a manual install make sure you don't have a .emacs file
or back up your existing .emacs.d directory manually.
Don't forget to adjust your prelude-modules.el file once the installation is done.
By default most of the modules that ship with Prelude are not loaded.
Obviously to use the Emacs Prelude you have to install Emacs 24 first. Have a look at the WikEmacs articles on installing Emacs.
You can install Emacs Prelude via the command line with either curl or
wget. Naturally git is also required.
If you're using curl type the following command:
curl -L https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh | shIf you're using wget type:
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh -O - | shgit clone git://github.com/bbatsov/prelude.git path/to/local/repo
ln -s path/to/local/repo ~/.emacs.d
cd ~/.emacs.dYou'd do well to replace ~/.emacs.d with the value of
user-emacs-directory for your OS. You can check the value by doing
C-h v user-emacs-directory inside Emacs.
The update procedure is fairly straightforward:
cd path/to/prelude/installation
git pullThe path/to/prelude/installation is usually ~/.emacs.d (at least
on Unix systems).
Alternatively you can run M-x prelude-update from Emacs itself.
It's generally a good idea to stop Emacs before you do the update. The next time Prelude starts it will install any new dependencies (if there are such).
By default most of the modules that ship with Prelude are not loaded.
;;; Uncomment the modules you'd like to use and restart Prelude afterwards
(require 'prelude-c)
;; (require 'prelude-clojure)
;; (require 'prelude-coffee)
;; (require 'prelude-common-lisp)
;; (require 'prelude-css)
(require 'prelude-emacs-lisp)
(require 'prelude-erc)
;; (require 'prelude-erlang)
;; (require 'prelude-haskell)
(require 'prelude-js)
;; (require 'prelude-latex)
(require 'prelude-lisp)
;; (require 'prelude-markdown)
;; (require 'prelude-mediawiki)
(require 'prelude-org)
(require 'prelude-perl)
;; (require 'prelude-python)
;; (require 'prelude-ruby)
;; (require 'prelude-scala)
(require 'prelude-scheme)
;; (require 'prelude-scss)
(require 'prelude-xml)You'll need to adjust your prelude-modules.el file once the
installation is done. If you are doing a manual install then you first
need to copy the prelude-modules.el available in the sample
directory to the root of path/to/prelude/installation and then
adjust that one.
After you've uncommented a module you should either restart Emacs or evaluate the module
require expression with C-x C-e.
Nothing fancy here. Just start Emacs as usual. Personally I run Emacs in daemon mode:
emacs --daemonAfterwards I connect to the server with either a terminal or a GUI client like this:
emacsclient -t
emacsclient -cYou'd probably do well to put a few aliases in your .zshrc (or
.bashrc):
alias e=emacsclient -t
alias ec=emacsclient -c
alias vim=emacsclient -t
alias vi=emacsclient -tThe last two aliases are helpful if you're used to editing files from
the command line using vi(m).
Certainly the best way to understand how Prelude enhances the default
Emacs experience is to peruse Prelude's source code (which is
obviously written in Emacs Lisp). Understanding the code is not
necessary of course. Prelude includes a prelude-mode minor Emacs mode
which collects some of the additional functionality added by
Prelude. It also adds an additional keymap that binds many of those
extensions to keybindings.
| Keybinding | Description |
|---|---|
| C-M-h | Kill the previous word(backward-kill-word). (as in Bash/Zsh) |
| C-x \ | align-regexp |
| C-+ | Increase font size(text-scale-increase). |
| C-- | Decrease font size(text-scale-decrease). |
| C-x O | Go back to previous window (the inverse of other-window (C-x o)). |
| C-^ | Join two lines into one(prelude-top-join-line). |
| C-x p | Start proced (manage processes from Emacs; works only in Linux). |
| C-x m | Start eshell. |
| C-x M-m | Start your default shell. |
| C-x C-m | Alias for M-x. |
| C-h A | Run apropos (search in all Emacs symbols). |
| M-\ | Run hippie-expand (a replacement for the default dabbrev-expand). |
| C-x C-b | Open ibuffer (a replacement for the default buffer-list). |
| F12 | Toggle the Emacs menu bar. |
| C-x g | Open Magit's status buffer. |
| C-= | Run expand-region (incremental text selection). |
| C-a | Run prelude-move-beginning-of-line. Read this for details. |
| Keybinding | Description |
|---|---|
| C-c o | Open the currently visited file with an external program. |
| C-c g | Search in Google for the thing under point (or an interactive query). |
| C-S-RET | Insert an empty line above the current line and indent it properly |
| S-RET | Insert an empty line and indent it properly (as in most IDEs). |
| C-S-up | Move the current line up. |
| C-S-down | Move the current line down. |
| C-c n | Fix indentation in buffer and strip whitespace. |
| C-c f | Open recently visited file. |
| C-M-\ | Indent region (if selected) or the entire buffer. |
| C-c u | Open URL in your default browser. |
| C-c e | Eval a bit of Emacs Lisp code and replace it with its result. |
| C-c s | Swap two active windows. |
| C-c d | Duplicate the current line (or region). |
| C-c r | Rename the currently visited file and buffer. |
| C-c t | Open a terminal emulator (ansi-term). |
| C-c k | Kill all open buffers except the one you're currently in. |
| C-c h | Open Helm (a useful means of navigating your buffers and project files). |
Here's a list of functionality provided by Projectile:
| Keybinding | Description |
|---|---|
| C-c p f | Display a list of all files in the project. With a prefix argument it will clear the cache first. |
| C-c p T | Display a list of all test files(specs, features, etc) in the project. |
| C-c p g | Run grep on the files in the project. |
| C-c p b | Display a list of all project buffers currently open. |
| C-c p o | Runs multi-occur on all project buffers currently open. |
| C-c p r | Runs interactive query-replace on all files in the projects. |
| C-c p i | Invalidates the project cache (if existing). |
| C-c p R | Regenerates the projects TAGS file. |
| C-c p k | Kills all project buffers. |
| C-c p d | Opens the root of the project in dired. |
| C-c p e | Shows a list of recently visited project files. |
| C-c p a | Runs ack on the project. Requires the presence of ack-and-a-half. |
| C-c p l | Runs a standard compilation command for your type of project. |
| C-c p p | Runs a standard test command for your type of project. |
| C-c p z | Adds the currently visited to the cache. |
| C-c p s | Display a list of known projects you can switch to. |
If you ever forget any of Projectile's keybindings just do a:
C-c p C-h
| Keybinding | Description |
|---|---|
| jj | Jump to the beginning of a word(ace-jump-word-mode) |
| jk | Jump to a character(ace-jump-char-mode) |
| jl | Jump to the beginning of a line(ace-jump-line-mode) |
| JJ | Jump back to previous buffer(prelude-switch-to-previous-buffer) |
| uu | View edits as a tree(undo-tree-visualize) |
In some cases you may not want to have a key-chord that is defined by prelude,
in which case you can disable the binding in your personal.el file by setting
its command to nil. For example, to disable the jj key-chord add the
following line:
(key-chord-define-global "jj" nil)If you're an evil-mode user you'll probably do well to disable key-chord-mode altogether:
(key-chord-mode -1)The default Prelude installation comes with a bare minimum of
functionality. It will however install add-ons for various programming
languages and frameworks on demand. For instance - if you try to open
a .clj file clojure-mode, nrepl.el and prelude's enhanced Lisp
configuration will be installed automatically for you.
You can, of course, install anything you wish manually as well.
Emacs 24 ships with a new theming facility that effectively renders
the old color-theme package obsolete. Emacs 24 provides a dozen of
built-in themes you can use out-of-the-box by invoking the M-x load-theme command.
Zenburn is the default color theme in Prelude, but you can change it at your discretion. Why Zenburn? I (and lots of hackers around the world) find it pretty neat for some reason. Personally I find the default theme pretty tiresome for the eyes, that's why I took that "controversial" decision to replace it. You can, of course, easily go back to the default (or select another theme entirely).
To disable Zenburn just put in your personal config the following line:
(disable-theme 'zenburn)Or you can use another theme altogether by adding something like:
(load-theme 'solarized-dark t)P.S. Solarized is not available by default - you'll have to install it from MELPA first.
Fork the official Prelude repo and add your own touch to it. You're advised to avoid changing stuff outside of the personal folder to avoid having to deal with git merge conflicts in the future.
If you'd like to add some auto installation of packages in your personal config use the following code:
(prelude-ensure-module-deps '(some-package some-other-package))Although whitespace-mode is awesome some people might find it too
intrusive. You can disable it in your
personal config with the following bit of code:
(setq prelude-whitespace nil)If you like whitespace-mode but prefer it to not automatically
cleanup your file on save, you can disable that behavior by setting
prelude-clean-whitespace-on-save to nil in your config file with:
(setq prelude-clean-whitespace-on-save nil)The prelude-clean-whitespace-on-save setting can also be set on a per-file or directory basis by using a file variable or a .dir-locals.el file.
If you're not fond of spellchecking on the fly:
(setq prelude-flyspell nil)Prelude makes heavy use of the flyspell-mode package for spell
checking of various things. The proper operation of flyspell depends
on the presence of the aspell program and an en dictionary on your
system. You can install aspell and the dictionary on OS X with
homebrew like this:
brew install aspell --with-lang=enOn Linux distros - just use your distro's package manager.
If your Emacs looks considerably uglier in a terminal (compared to the
GUI version) try adding this to your .bashrc or .zshrc:
export TERM=xterm-256colorSource the .bashrc file and start Emacs again.
If you get some http connection error related to the MELPA repo
just do a manual M-x package-refresh-contents and restart Emacs
afterwards.
This is not a bug - it's a feature! I firmly believe that the one true way to use Emacs is by using it the way it was intended to be used (as far as navigation is concerned at least). That's why I've disabled all movement commands with arrows (and keys like page up, page down, etc) - to prevent you from being tempted to use them.
If you'd still like to use the arrow keys just invoke M-x guru-mode to enable them for the duration of your
current Emacs session or add the following snippet to your
personal Emacs customization to enable them permanently:
(setq prelude-guru nil)Prelude overrides C-a to behave as described
here. If
you don't like that simply add this to your personal config:
(global-set-key [remap move-beginning-of-line]
'move-beginning-of-line)While everything in Prelude should work fine in Windows, I test it only with Linux & OSX, so there are Windows related problems from time to time. This situation will probably improve over time.
WikEmacs collects useful resources for working with GNU Emacs. Please, take the time to peruse and improve them as you accumulate knowledge about Emacs. Prelude makes this especially easy, since it bundles MediaWiki support + the settings required to access WikEmacs right away.
Check out the project's issue list a list of unresolved issues. By the way - feel free to fix any of them and send me a pull request. :-)
Support is available via the Prelude Google Group [email protected].
Here's a list of all the people who have contributed to the development of Emacs Prelude.
Bug reports and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. GitHub pull requests are even better! :-)
Cheers,
Bozhidar