Install Emacs on the Mac

This note is outdated, I have since switched to Emacs Plus with Homebrew. See here: Install Emacs on the Mac - Part Two.

There are many ways to install Emacs on the Mac, from pre-build Applications, to Homebrew, to installing from source.

My current favorite way to get the latest Emacs which has some additional stuff for the Mac is by using a build script, which builds Emacs from its source.

It’s called build-emacs-macos and is on Github. The instructions to use it are here in the README.

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Emacs on Windows WSL2

So, it turns out that WSL2 is actually kind of neat, where it runs a Linux image at almost native speed, and also supports Wayland.

So, what’s the first thing you do in WSL2? Install Emacs of course!

Below is the script I use to install Emacs on an Ubuntu image.

To know what the latest stable version on master is, I look at this Github issue from Jim Myhrberg, who keeps track of those.

# Checkout Emacs
$ git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git

# Checkout latest stable version, see note above.
$ git checkout 8febda4

# Vanilla Emacs requirements
$ sudo apt install build-essential autoconf libgtk-3-dev libgnutls28-dev libtiff5-dev libgif-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev librsvg2-dev libxpm-dev libncurses-dev texinfo adwaita-icon-theme-full

# Native compilation requirements
$ sudo apt install libgccjit-11-dev

# Required for Native JSON
$ sudo apt install libjansson4 libjansson-dev

# Required for tree-sitter support
$ sudo apt install libtree-sitter-dev

$ cd emacs
$ export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-11 CXX=/usr/bin/gcc-11
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-pgtk --with-native-compilation --with-tree-sitter --with-json --without-pop
$ make -j$(nproc)
$ sudo make install

And, sometimes when you update the repository, it refuses to build. I usually fix that with running make bootstrap er make distclean.

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Syncthing on WSL2

I like to use Syncthing to sync files between accounts and machines, and now even between my Windows subsystem and Windows itself.

To run Syncthing on WSL I use this script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
SERVICE="syncthing"
USER="petar"
PORT=2103
OPTS="
        --no-browser
        --home=/home/$USER/.config/syncthing
        --gui-address=http://127.0.0.1:$PORT
        --logfile=/home/$USER/.config/syncthing/syncthing.log
"

if ! pgrep -x "$SERVICE" >/dev/null
then
        daemonize /usr/bin/syncthing serve "$OPTS"
fi

Make sure to change your username and to make the port unique, if you run multiple Syncthings on your machine.

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Rust Analyzer from Source

I’m developing on a FreeBSD machine and rust-analyzer is not available as a pre-build release.

Luckily, it’s easy to build rust-analyzer from source. Just clone the repository and run:

cargo xtask install --server

I’m on Emacs, so I only need the server, hence the --server argument. If you are using Visual Studio Code, don’t add it.

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How to install Quicklisp

Before starting, make sure you have installed SBCL. Then, get the quicklisp file, which lets you bootstrap and install Quicklisp.

cd ~/downloads
curl -O http://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp

Now you are in the REPL, and you can install Quicklisp. By default, it will be installed in ~/quicklisp, but I like to keep my home directory clean and install it in ~/.local/share/quicklisp. Thus the :path argument.

(quicklisp-quickstart:install :path "~/.local/share/quicklisp/")

I also prefer Quicklisp to be available when I start SBCL, so I add it to my init file:

(ql:add-to-init-file)

That’s it! Happy Lisping!

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Switch the current working directory in the REPL

If you start a REPL in the wrong directory, you can switch it by using UIOP.

UIOP is the portability layer of ASDF, supplying an abstraction on top of different implementations or OS’es.

For example, to change to a new project do:

(uiop:chdir "~/lisp/fangorn/")

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Make your own packages available to Quicklisp

In Lisp it’s quite common to have your own helper libraries, which are packaged as ASDF packages. To be able to use your libraries in other projects, you need to let ASDF know how to find them.

First create the directory ~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/

There create a file with any name of your choice but with the type conf, for instance 50-petar-lisp.conf.

In this file, add the following line to tell ASDF to recursively scan all the subdirectories under /home/petar/lisp/ for .asd files: (:tree "/home/petar/lisp/").

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Template for a new Common Lisp Project

To easily start a new Common Lisp project, I’m making use of the CL-Project from the famed Lisper Eitaro Fukamachi.

You can either install it through roswell with ros install cl-project or through the use of Quicklisp with (ql:quickload :cl-project).

The benefit of install it through Roswell is that you also get a binary.

To create a project through the REPL:

(cl-project:make-project #p"lisp/cl-sample/"
  :author "Eitaro Fukamachi"
  :email "[email protected]"
  :license "LLGPL"
  :depends-on '(:clack :cl-annot))

Or by using the binary:

make-project /home/user/common-lisp/sample \
    --name sample \
    --description "sample project." \
    --author "Your name" --license LLGPL \
    --depends-on alexandria split-sequence`

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Cargo modules

Today I learned about the cargo-modules, a cargo plugin which shows you an overview of your crates modules.

I like to check the tree and my public interface with:

cargo modules generate tree --with-types

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Fish environment variable for just one command

Happy Fish shell user for years, but I’m never able to remember how to set an environment variable for a single command. Maybe I’ll remember if I write it down:

env SOME_VAR=1 command

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