ninerian/corgi

Corgi

A minimalistic evil-based Emacs configuration that feels like a slimmed down version of Spacemacs.

This is a personal setup and a work in progress. Things will still change, some things will seem highly opinionated, some things will still break. Use at your own risk. The plan is to eventually evolve this into a @lambdaisland endorsed Clojure-focused evil-based Emacs config, but until we get there this is not intended for general consumption.

Initial write-up of the first version is below, but is already outdated.

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What's in the box so far?

• evil
• evil-collection
• evil-leader
• ivy
• counsel
• swiper
• xclip
• which-key
• winum
• undo-fu
• clojure/cider/clj-refactor
• aggressive-indent
• company
• projectile
• magit

While I love Spacemacs I find the sheer size of it can become an issue. It contains much functionality and many customizations that I don't need, and I struggle to understand how things fit together, or how to add my own customizations.

This is an attempt to go back to the basics, a simple and straightforward Emacs config built from first principles, using straight.el for reproducible package installs, and use-package to keep the config tidy. It sets up Vim/Evil style editing, as well as spacebar-prefixed keybindings in the style of Spacemacs.

I especially felt the need for a lighter config when doing remote pairing using tmux. The limited set of dependencies should make this config quick to set up, and snappy in use.

Keybindings based on a SPC leader key are installed based on leader_bindings.el. This provides a declarative single source of truth for all Spacemacs-like bindings.

(("b" "Buffer commands"
  ("b" "Switch buffer" ivy-switch-buffer)
  ("d" "Kill buffer" kill-buffer))

 ("f" "File commands"
  ("f" "Find file" counsel-find-file)
  ("s" "Save file" save-buffer)
  ("S" "Save all" evil-write-all))

 ("s" "Search commands"
  ("s" "Search in buffer" swiper))

 ("h" "Help"
  ("d" "Describe"
   ("k" "Describe key" describe-key)
   ("v" "Describe variable" counsel-describe-variable)
   ("f" "Describe function" counsel-descbinds-function)))

 ("w" "Windows"
  ("1" "Delete other windows" delete-other-windows)
  ("/" "Split window right" split-window-right)
  ("-" "Split window below" split-window-below)
  ("o" "Go to other window" other-window)
  ("d" "Delete window" delete-window))

 ("SPC" "Execute command (M-x)" counsel-M-x)
 ("1" "Select window 1" winum-select-window-1)
 ("2" "Select window 2" winum-select-window-2)
 ("2" "Select window 2" winum-select-window-2)
 ("4" "Select window 4" winum-select-window-4)
 ("5" "Select window 5" winum-select-window-5)
 ("6" "Select window 6" winum-select-window-6)
 ("7" "Select window 7" winum-select-window-7)
 ("8" "Select window 8" winum-select-window-8)
 ("9" "Select window 9" winum-select-window-9)
 ("0" "Select window 10" winum-select-window-10))

Principles

Everything is a package

Custom functions and modifications should become their own package, or be submitted upstream, so that the config itself is just loading packages and tying them together.

-> still a few things in here that need to go into packages.

When in doubt, do less

When there are multiple competing options for how to handle something, do the one that is closer to the default.

Declarative keybindings

Bindings are data and should be in one place, people who want to tweak or supply their own bindings need to just edit one file with bindings and nothing but bindings.

Consistent keybindings

When a command is specific to a major mode, its binding should do the closest equivalent in other major modes, or do nothing. So no bindings that do radically different things depending on the mode. (this is mostly for , leader keys)

A good enough subset

We don't want to do everything that Spacemacs (or vim) does, we do want to have a good enough set of commands that a person can easily learn and be productive with, without getting overwhelmed.

Terminal-first

Things should work just as well in the terminal as in the GUI. There should be no bindings or behaviors that only work in the GUI.

Reproducible

Everything is immutably versioned with straight. People should never run into issues because of slightly different package versions.

Somewhat opinionated

This config makes a few clear, non-negotiable decisions. It's evil based, has structural editing, includes org-mode, etc. But on some things it does not have an opinion. The theme, font, desktop-mode, linum-mode, mode-line are all things you can configure in your own corgi-user-config.el.

License

GPL version 3

Copyright © Arne Brasseur 2020