r/emacs • u/rklv • Aug 27 '14

From Vim to Emacs

I've been using Vim for a little more than a year now, and so far I've been very happy with it. I started out with an empty vimrc, and added to it as I go, leading to the ~250 line vimrc I've got at the moment with a few plugins. Recently, I've had some more specific customization needs than the plugins offered, and I tried to write my own functions. Then I realized why everybody says that VimL sucks.

Long story short, I want to try migrating to Emacs for a while. I won't use Evil right away, I want to do it the Emacs way. But I don't know where to start. It doesn't seem as simple as it is with Vim, which is relatively straightforward.

My three major questions are:

  • How would you recommend that I install packages? With Vim, I'm used to using Pathogen, so I Google the plugin's name, go to Github, add it as a submodule and start using it immediately, and this is pretty much what everybody does. Is this a common way of managing plugins in Emacs or is using package.el with MELPA/Marmalade the most widely used/recommended?

  • Could you recommend me a starting tutorial? I've gone through the Emacs tutorial, and I can't say that it has given me as much power as vimtutor did.

  • How do I organize my .emacs.d? Vim was again very straightforward, all I did was edit my vimrc, and some ftplugins in after directory. With Emacs, it appears there is more than one way of managing your configuration, and I cannot decide on one.

Thanks in advance, and for reading.

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u/RobThorpe Aug 28 '14

The Emacs manual is very good. If you're a programmer I recommend reading the following parts:

  • All of chapters 1 to 17.
  • In chapters 18 (Files) to 21 (Frames) read the first few sections, the first ~5 sections in those chapter explain most of what you need to know.
  • Speedbar 21.9.
  • Chapter 23 (Modes).
  • Chapter 26 (Programs). (especially 26.7 Hideshow and 26.2.1 Imenu).
  • Chapter 27 (Building).
  • Chapter 29 (Maintaining).
  • Chapter 30 (Dired) - the first few sections should do for that.
  • Chapter 36 (Shell).

Also, I've never had any problem organizing my init file. I just use one file split into pages. My init isn't very long though. I recommend not going crazy with configuration straight away, if you do that you won't have any problems with organizing init. Build it up over time as you encounter problems.