The Emacs Starter Kit for the Social Sciences is maintained by Kieran Healy. The original version was written by Phil Hagelberg. This version is more directly descended from Eric Schulte’s excellent org-mode implementation. It is designed specifically for GNU Emacs 24.4 on Mac OS X.
The goal of this kit is to provide a more useful set of defaults than you get normally with Emacs. It’s intended for beginners, but provides a good set of defaults for all levels of users. This particular version of the kit includes settings and packages that are particularly useful for researchers in the social sciences.
The main advantage of this Emacs Starter Kit are
- better default settings
- inclusion of many useful libraries and packages
- “literate” customization embedded in Org-mode files
- an organized directory structure
- git provides for version control, backup, and sharing
Source code for the latest version is at http://kjhealy.github.com/emacs-starter-kit/.
This won’t teach you Emacs, but it’ll make it easier to get comfortable. To access the tutorial, press control-h followed by t.
Installation instructions for the social-science version of the kit can be found at http://kieranhealy.org/resources/eamcs-starter-kit.html/.If you have used Emacs before and already have a .emacs file or .emacs.d directory, back them up and then delete them. See below for details on how to add customizations to the kit.
You have two choices.
Option A. Download a .zip file of the kit.
Option B. If you want to keep up with changes to the kit, you should clone the source code using git rather than simply copying a static version of it. In general I think you should be using version control on your plain-text documents anyway, so I recommend this option. The most straightforward way to get the tools you need is to install Xcode. Xcode is what software developers use to write Mac and iOS applications. As such it comes with a bunch of things we are not so interested in, but it makes it easy to install the tools we do need. It’s available for free via the Mac App Store. Once downloaded, launch Xcode, go to Xcode > Preferences > Downloads and install the Command Line Tools for Xcode. At that point you can quit Xcode and never use it again. Alternatively, go to Apple’s Developer Site, login with your Apple ID and download the Command Line Tools for Xcode package by itself, without the Xcode application.
0.1 Get Emacs. The starter kit requires at least Emacs 24.4 (released October 2014), and preferably the most recent released version. Download Emacs here. Alternatively, if you know what you’re doing you may compile it yourself.
0.2 Install a Modern TeX Distribution and the Skim PDF reader. If you are using OS X, download MacTeX and install it. The kit is set up to use the Skim PDF reader to display PDF files created from .tex files. You can use other readers, but will need to modify the setup in the starter-kit-latex.org file.
0.3 Install R and Pandoc. These are not strictly required for the installation to work, and you can skip this step if you like. But you will probably be using them anyway, if you’re not already. If you’re doing statistical work you will probably want to use R or Stata. R is free and you can download it here. Pandoc is a very useful utility that lets you convert easily between many different forms of plain-text markup (such as Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, and others). Get Pandoc here.
0.4 Note your user name or the name of your computer. If you don’t know either, open the Terminal application and do
whoamifor your user name and
hostnamefor the system name. You will need to know your login name to activate the final customization file properly. You can use the system name as well (or instead).
1. If you downloaded a .zip file of the kit, you must uncompress it, move the resulting folder to the top level of your home director and rename it .emacs.d. Assuming the downloaded zip file is in your ~/Downloads folder, open a Terminal window and do this:
cd ~/Downloads
unzip emacs-starter-kit-master.zip
mv emacs-starter-kit-master ~/.emacs.dAlternatively, if you are using git (the preferred method), then clone the starter kit from github. Open a Terminal window and do this:
git clone git://github.com/kjhealy/emacs-starter-kit ~/.emacs.d2. Inside the file kjhealy.org, change the paths to any BibTeX databases as described at the top of that file.
3. Rename the starter kit’s kjhealy.org file to that of %your-username%.org or %your-systemname%.org, based on the information you noted in 0.4 above. This is where you can add in any of your own further customizations to Emacs.
4. Launch Emacs.
When you first start Emacs after installing the starter-kit, it will try to contact several package repositories, so make sure you have an internet connection. The kit will download packages mainly from the official GNU ELPA Repository and the MELPA Repo. Each package will be fetched, compiled by Emacs, and stored in the ~/.emacs.d directory. In practice I’ve found that this process is prone to hiccups as packages are fetched from the servers, so please be patient with it. If it doesn’t get everything first time around, quit and relaunch Emacs, and it will try again. If the problem persists—especially if you get a message saying “The package ‘auctex’ is not available for installation”—you can manually install packages as follows. Open Emacs, do M-x list-packages and in the resulting buffer search or scroll down the list to, e.g., auctex, mark it for installation by pressing i and then install it (or them) by hitting x. With the packages in place, restart Emacs and the starter kit will finish setting itself up. Unfortunately, I can’t control these intermittent installation errors. They seem to have something to do with the way Emacs talks to the GNU ELPA package server.
5. (Optional.) Once Emacs is up and running, do M-x starter-kit-compile to byte-compile the starter-kit’s files, for slightly faster loading.
If you want to keep your regular ~/.emacs.d in place and just launch a single instance using the starter kit, try the following invocation:
emacs -q -l ~/src/emacs-starter-kit/init.elNote that having a ~/.emacs file might override the starter kit loading, so if you’ve having trouble loading it, make sure that file is not present.
The init.el file is where everything begins. It’s the first file to get loaded. Additional customization embedded in this file provides what I consider to be better defaults, both for different programming languages and for built-in Emacs features like bindings or registers.
The Starter Kit makes use of Emacs 24’s new package system to install
a number of additional packages. These are stored in
~/.emacs.d/elpa. Some useful packages are not available through the
package manager yet. These are stored in ~/.emacs.d/src/.
There are also a few files that are meant for code that doesn’t belong in the Starter Kit, they are described below in Customization.
The many defaults built into the starter kit are only the beginning of most users customization of Emacs to suite their needs. The starter kit provides a number of places for additional user and system specific customization. These are designed in such a way that it will be easy for you to continue tracking your own personal customization inside the starter-kit while retaining your ability to pull down general starter-kit updates without conflict.
- Make your own branch
- The first step to user-specific
customization is (like in any git project) to make a branch for
your local changes using
git branch. Save the master branch for pulling down new versions of the starter kit, and save all of your personal information in a personal branch. That way you never have to worry about accidentallygit push‘ing up a patch with all of your gnus email passwords. - User specific config
- Your personal configuration information can
be stored in a user-specific-config file. This is the file named
after your user with the extensions
.elor.org[2]. If you’re unsure of your user name evaluate the following code block to find out.echo $USER
If your configuration starts to feel cramped in a single file (although with the nested headlines of an Org-mode file, that could take a while) and you want to stretch your config’s legs, you can also create a directory named after your system user name. If a such a directory exists, it will be added to the load-path, and any elisp or org-mode w/embedded elisp files in it will be loaded.
- System specific config
- Finally, you may want to configure
different settings for different machines. The Starter Kit will
look for a file named after the current hostname ending in
.elor.orgwhich will allow host-specific configuration. If you’re unsure of your hostname the following can be executed to find out.hostname - Installing more elisp libraries
- While the starter kit include
many useful Emacs lisp libraries, you are bound to find more that
you will want to install. The easiest way to install new
libraries is through the Emacs Lisp Package Archive (see ELPA).
When a library is not available through ELPA you can grab its
source and place it directly in the
srcdirectory. Any packages found there will automatically be added to your load-path when Emacs starts up.
Some additional miscellaneous configuration and getting started suggestions
- First off see the Customization node in the Emacs manual. Available
online or through the
infocommand (run withC-h i). grep-ing through thestarter-kit-*files in this directory can provide useful examples for how to do things like install major modes, define keybindings, etc..- read the following Key-Binding-Conventions before defining too many personal key bindings
- The starter-kit comes pre-bundled with a variety of color themes. See Color Themes for instructions on how to change the colors used by Emacs.
Libraries from ELPA or the MELPA Repo pare preferred when available since dependencies are handled automatically, and the burden to update them is removed from the user.
Sometimes packages are removed from the Starter Kit as they get added
to ELPA itself. This has occasionally caused problems with certain
packages. If you run into problems with such a package, try removing
everything from inside the elpa/ directory and invoking M-x starter-kit-elpa-install in a fresh instance.
These should be loaded on startup rather than autoloaded on demand since they are likely to be used in every session
(require 'cl)
(require 'saveplace)
(require 'ffap)
(require 'uniquify)
(require 'ansi-color)
(require 'recentf)Function to check if a packages exist in the load path. This may be used to preempt the installation of ELPA versions of packages whose source may already be found in the load path.
(defun starter-kit-loadable-p (package)
"Check if PACKAGE is loadable from a directory in `load-path'."
(let ((load-file (concat (symbol-name package) ".el")))
(catch 'file-found
(dolist (dir load-path)
(let ((path (expand-file-name load-file dir)))
(when (file-exists-p path)
(throw 'file-found path)))))))(defun starter-kit-load (file)
"This function is to be used to load starter-kit-*.org files."
(org-babel-load-file (expand-file-name file
dotfiles-dir)))(defun starter-kit-compile (&optional arg)
"Tangle and Byte compile all starter-kit files."
(interactive "P")
(cl-flet ((age (file)
(float-time
(time-subtract (current-time)
(nth 5 (or (file-attributes (file-truename file))
(file-attributes file)))))))
(mapc
(lambda (file)
(when (string= "org" (file-name-extension file))
(let ((el-file (concat (file-name-sans-extension file) ".el")))
(when (or arg
(not (and (file-exists-p el-file)
(> (age file) (age el-file)))))
(org-babel-tangle-file file el-file "emacs-lisp")
(byte-compile-file el-file)))))
(apply #'append
(mapcar
(lambda (d)
(when (and (file-exists-p d) (file-directory-p d))
(mapcar (lambda (f) (expand-file-name f d)) (directory-files d))))
(list (concat dotfiles-dir user-login-name) dotfiles-dir))))))aspell workaround in starter-kit-aspell
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-aspell.org")Load up ELPA, the Emacs Lisp package manager.
(require 'package)
(setq package-archives
'(
("org" . "http://orgmode.org/elpa/")
("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")))
;;; Add support to package.el for pre-filtering available packages
(defvar package-filter-function nil
"Optional predicate function used to internally filter packages used by package.el.
The function is called with the arguments PACKAGE VERSION ARCHIVE, where
PACKAGE is a symbol, VERSION is a vector as produced by `version-to-list', and
ARCHIVE is the string name of the package archive.")
(defadvice package--add-to-archive-contents
(around filter-packages (package archive) activate)
"Add filtering of available packages using `package-filter-function', if non-nil."
(when (or (null package-filter-function)
(funcall package-filter-function
(car package)
(funcall (if (fboundp 'package-desc-version)
'package--ac-desc-version
'package-desc-vers)
(cdr package))
archive))
ad-do-it))
(defvar melpa-exclude-packages
'()
"Don't install Melpa versions of these packages.")
;; Don't take Melpa versions of certain packages
(setq package-filter-function
(lambda (package version archive)
(and
(not (memq package '(eieio)))
(or (not (string-equal archive "melpa"))
(not (memq package melpa-exclude-packages))))))
(package-initialize)
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-elpa.org")Work around a bug on OS X where system-name is FQDN
(if (eq system-type 'darwin)
(setq system-name (car (split-string system-name "\\."))))You can keep system- or user-specific customizations here in either raw emacs-lisp files or as embedded elisp in org-mode files (as done in this document).
(setq system-specific-config (concat dotfiles-dir system-name ".el")
system-specific-literate-config (concat dotfiles-dir system-name ".org")
user-specific-config (concat dotfiles-dir user-login-name ".el")
user-specific-literate-config (concat dotfiles-dir user-login-name ".org")
user-specific-dir (concat dotfiles-dir user-login-name))
(add-to-list 'load-path user-specific-dir)You can keep elisp source in the src directory. Packages loaded
from here will override those installed by ELPA. This is useful if
you want to track the development versions of a project, or if a
project is not in elpa.
(setq elisp-source-dir (concat dotfiles-dir "src"))
(add-to-list 'load-path elisp-source-dir)The following files contain the remainder of the core of the Emacs Starter Kit. All of the code in this section should be loaded by everyone using the starter kit.
Starter kit function definitions in starter-kit-defuns
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-defuns.org")Key Bindings in starter-kit-bindings
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-bindings.org")Miscellaneous settings in starter-kit-misc
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-misc.org")Located in starter-kit-completion.
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-completion.org") These sections pertain to specific languages or modes. Feel free to turn off these sections if you don’t plan on using the related mode or language.
Located in starter-kit-org.
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-org.org")Located in starter-kit-eshell
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-eshell.org")Located in starter-kit-lisp
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-lisp.org")Located in starter-kit-js
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-js.org")Located in starter-kit-perl
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-perl.org")Located in starter-kit-python
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-python.org")Located in starter-kit-latex
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-latex.org")Located in starter-kit-stats
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-stats.org")Located in starter-kit-text
(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-text.org")(load custom-file 'noerror)After we’ve loaded all the Starter Kit defaults, lets load the User’s stuff.
(if (file-exists-p elisp-source-dir)
(let ((default-directory elisp-source-dir))
(normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path)))
(if (file-exists-p system-specific-config) (load system-specific-config))
(if (file-exists-p system-specific-literate-config)
(org-babel-load-file system-specific-literate-config))
(if (file-exists-p user-specific-config) (load user-specific-config))
(if (file-exists-p user-specific-literate-config)
(org-babel-load-file user-specific-literate-config))
(when (file-exists-p user-specific-dir)
(let ((default-directory user-specific-dir))
(mapc #'load (directory-files user-specific-dir nil ".*el$"))
(mapc #'org-babel-load-file (directory-files user-specific-dir nil ".*org$"))))Please share anything that you have come across which you think could be helpful, either in the form of a pull request, a patch, or just an email to me http://github.com/eschulte.
Some users wish to run org-mode straight from the sources, since the compiled source can make reading backtraces difficult. Whatever your reason may be, you use the starter kit this way.Skip the make step in the <<Installation>> section. Instead, follow
these instructions.
org-install.elis required by the starter kit. To make it, navigate to thesrc/orgdirectory and entermake lisp/org-install.elat the command prompt.- Updating the documentation is probably a good idea. Enter
make info. Optionally, you can update the system-wide org documentation by enteringmake install-info. If you want a PDF version of the manual, you can entermake doc/org.pdfand find the resulting file in the doc directory.
Doing a git pull and git submodule update will not be
enough. Go to the src/org directory and enter make clean to get
rid of the old version. Then, enter make, or follow the
alternate instructions.
I changed my personal init file, username.org, but the starter kit didn’t pick up the changes. What do I do now?
Some users may find it useful to remove the tangled version of init files. If you find a particular file is not loading as expected, remove the elisp version of that file and restart Emacs.
For example, if your $USER is “johndoe”, you could issue rm
johndoe.el to remove the tangled output from the previous time
johndoe.org was loaded by org-babel.
Under no circumstances should you issue rm *.el! This will remove
the init.el file, which is perhaps the most crucial startup file in
the starter kit. Use some regexp magic if you want to remove all elisp
files except this one. For example, this works nicely:
rm starter-kit*.elSometimes, info manuals can be a real headache, but some users prefer them. If the org info manual isn’t showing up, or the info manual is displaying the wrong version of the org-mode documentation (Emacs ships with an older version of org-mode than the one the starter kit uses), the problem most likely resides in your local setup.
- The shell’s $INFOPATH variable
Have you set the shell’s INFOPATH variable? The starter kit should
not be ignoring this variable. This variable is copied into the
elisp variable
Info-default-directory-listwhen emacs starts up. The starter kit then copiesInfo-default-directory-listtoInfo-directory-listwithout losing any changes you may have made to this variable. This is the next place to look. Info-directory-listIs the doc directory for the starter kit version of org-mode at the top of this list? If not, open a ticket and describe what the variable looks like.If you installed the starter kit to
~/.emacs.d/then the directory~/.emacs.d/src/org/docshould be at the top ofInfo-directory-list.- Did you
makethe manual? Especially if you choose not to compile org-mode, you may need to compile the documentation. Regardless of whether or not you compiled org, it may be helpful to try this solution out before opening a ticket.Navigate to the
src/orgdirectory of the starter kit. At the command prompt, typemake info make install-infowhere the last step is optional, and only required if you want to update the site-wide documentation of org-mode.
To check if this fixed the issue, first close any Info buffers in emacs and call the Info index with
C-h ithen choose org-mode.
[2] The emacs starter kit uses org-babel to load embedded elisp code directly from Org Mode documents.
(message "Starter Kit main file loaded.")