Emagician

Snarfed this idea from https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live.

​‌డ(°益°)హ ,( Bro, Even if you're swol, it doesn't mean you're a bro, bro. )

It's a super great idea to use the scratch buffer as a way to communicate state to the user. For now we need simple functions that are not prone to breaking.

First step is to inhibit the splash. We're making our own splash!

(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)

Now a basic scratch message. If things go pants-up here, we want a basic message saying so.

(setq initial-stratch-message
      (concat ";;; -X-x-X- Invokaction SuperFailure! -X-x-X-" "\n"
              ";;; Problem in Emagician.org when setting up Breakage Helpers"))

Now that we have the basics done, lets define 2 helper functions to set or add the scratch message.

(defun emagician/set-scratch (&rest lines)
  (setq initial-scratch-message (apply 'concat lines)))

(defun emagician/append-scratch (&rest lines)
  (setq initial-scratch-message (apply 'concat initial-scratch-message lines)))

The scratch buffer will turn into something of a desktop. It's handy to be able to stuff "scratch links" in there. Anything in there gets output to the scratch during Thee Scratch Initiation. This is a Homestuck reference. It will be expounded upon later.

Then when Emacs loads, you can put the cursor over the sexp and C-x C-e. I use this to launch magit for work/personal projects, start vms, etc.

(defvar emagician/pre-scratch-links '()
  "A list of links to append to emagician/scratch-links.

This is necessary because we may need to communicate to the user
before the rest of the scratch interface is built.")

Okay, so this is the secret sauce. I set the scratch to this baseline helper (plus cuteness) so that I can debug startups much easier. It includes a chunk to launch emacs forcing debug-init.

(emagician/set-scratch
  ";; -|-+-|- Invocation Failure.  Sorry. -|-+-|-" "\n"
  ";; You know what to do." "\n"
  ";; \n"
  ";; Emagician Starter kit Version: " emagician/version "\n"
  ";; Emacs: " (number-to-string emacs-major-version) "." 
      (number-to-string emacs-minor-version) 
      " [" (when emacs-repository-version (number-to-string emacs-repository-version)) "]" 
      "\n"
  ";; \n"
  ";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;" "\n"
  ";;                      ;;" "\n"      
  ";; It's dangerous to go ;;" "\n"
  ";; alone! take this:    ;;" "\n"
  ";;                      ;;" "\n"
  ";;   🔥     👷     🔥  ;;" "\n"
  ";;          🔮          ;;" "\n"
  ";;                      ;;" "\n"
  ";;;;;;;;;;;;  ;;;;;;;;;;;;" "\n"
  "\n"
  "(shell-command \"" invocation-directory invocation-name " --debug-init\")\n")

This is generally useful anyway. We could also use initial buffer, but that has a tendency to get overridden by hooks.

(defun emagician/show-scratch ()
  "Show the scratch buffer"
  (interactive)
  (set-window-buffer nil "*scratch*"))

(add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook 'emagician/show-scratch t)

We set our download dir to local-packages. We also do the trick of doing package-refresh-contents if package-archive-contents is empty.

We set the archives to the big 3 plus orgmode. MELPA, ELPA and Org! Oh My!

(defvar emagician/are-elpas-reachable? t "Whether or not ELPAs are reachable")

(setq package-user-dir (concat emagician/dir "elpa"))

(setq package-archives
      '(("gnu"         . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
        ("MELPA"       . "http://melpa.org/packages/")
        ("org"         . "http://orgmode.org/elpa/")))

(package-initialize)

(condition-case err
    (unless package-archive-contents (package-refresh-contents))
  ((error)
   (let ((scratch-msg (concat ";;; !!! Couldn't refresh package contents\n"
                              "((package-refresh-contents)(beginning-of-line)(kill-line))")))
     (message "Could not refresh package contents: %s %S" (car err) (cdr err))
     (emagician/append-scratch scratch-msg)
     (add-to-list 'emagician/pre-scratch-links scratch-msg)
     (setq emagician/are-elpas-reachable? nil))))

(add-to-list 'load-path emagician/dir)
(add-to-list 'load-path (concat emagician/dir "src"))
(add-to-list 'load-path (concat emagician/dir "dist"))
(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path (concat emagician/dir "themes"))

(setq custom-file (concat emagician/dir "custom.el"))