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technomancy
emacs-starter-kit
Developer Tools2008–2017
technomancy / emacs-starter-kit · Archived

emacs-starter-kit

[ARCHIVED] this is ancient history

29Distinct people
34Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
2.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

[ARCHIVED] this is ancient history

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Besides the inline manual that emacs has in itself. I recommend you to start using the Emacs Starter Kit [1]. Try to read the source and understand what it's doing. You will…

pdelgallego used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:01:02 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year34 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2008-12-04 12:29:47 UTC to 2017-04-22 19:16:55 UTC.

02468102008-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20082009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 1 submissions, 8 comments2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20082008-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20092009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20102010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC918
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Emacs Starter Kit Version 3 of the Emacs Starter Kit is implemented as a prose guide to various packages and settings which can greatly improve the Emacs experience. History Older versions of the Starter Kit attempted to be one-size-fits-all codebase intended to be dropped into your ~/.emacs.d directory wholesale. While this proved very popular, taking a big bundle of unrelated functionality leads to simply adopting things without developing any real understanding. When something goes wrong or even just behaves differently from what you'd like, you don't know where to look to fix it. I've since come to realize users are better suited by small, focused packages which provide specific pieces of new functionality. So rather than putting up a big pile of code, the Starter Kit has shifted to become merely a guide. As an Emacs user, you're going to have to get comfortable seeking out new pieces of elisp, bringing them in, configuring them, and eventually writing your own. The Starter Kit can help this process by giving hints as to where to start and what to look for, but constructing a solid configuration is ultimately a personal journey for which you must take the first steps. Getting Started I strongly recommend keeping your dotfiles under version control and installing Emacs packages inside it using git subtree. This avoids many common problems with package.el, and it allows you to seamlessly roll back upgrades which introduce breaking changes as well as guaranteeing that all machines you work on share the same versions. (defun pnh-reinit-libs () (interactive) (let ((generated-autoload-file (concat user-emacs-directory "my-autoload.el"))) (dolist (d (directory-files (concat user-emacs-directory "lib") t "^[^\.]")) (dolist (f (directory-files d t "\\.el$")) (byte-compile-file f)) (update-directory-autoloads d)))) (dolist (l (directory-files (concat user-emacs-directory "lib") nil "^[^\.]")) (add-to-list 'load-path (concat user-emacs-directory "lib/" l)) (autoload (intern l) (concat l ".el"))) (when (not (file-exists-p (concat user-emacs-directory "my-autoload.el"))) (pnh-reinit-libs)) (load (concat user-emacs-directory "my-autoload.el")) If you liked ... you might also like These are all libraries that focus on doing one thing and do it consistently well. better-defaults fix bad built-in behavior. magit use git without being driven insane. smex for getting ido-style feedback in M-x. ido-ubiquitous for geting ido goodness everywhere else. paredit keeps parentheses under control. idle-highlight-mode for seeing everywhere else an identifier is used at a glance. find-file-in-project quick project-scoped navigation scpaste the pastebin of champions. elisp-slime-nav nicer navigation for emacs lisp code. exwm a tiling window manager for X. Copyright Copyright © 2008-2017 Phil Hagelberg and contributors Files are licensed under the same license as Emacs unless otherwise specified. See the file COPYING for details.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

9 sources
Another possible 'canonical' solution is Technomancy (of leiningen fame)'s http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit. Removed a lot of the futz of installing emacs for me. I still haven't worried about slime or swank yet, and i had to use elpa's installer to install a simple clojure-mode (M-x packages-install [enter] clojure-mode [enter] i think) but its got a basic solid seeming emacs with paredit and clojure stuff going for me. caveat: github was being weird and i couldnt clone the repo so i had to visit the downloads page and get it to package up a snapshot for me. anyways, its the least painful experience setting up emacs ive had. ymmv?
In Emacs isn't for everyone
Here is what I did - 1. Started with emacs-starter-kit - http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit 2. Install clojure-mode, slime, slime-repl and swank-clojure using ELPA (M-x package-list-packages) 3. Install http://github.com/technomancy/leiningen (again technomancy) Starting a new project is the following - 1. lein new <project_name> 2. Tweak the project.clj to pull in the dependencies I need (Using the project.clj that leiningen is a good starting point http://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/project.... ) 3. Fire up emacs - M-x swank-clojure-project and point to the root of the newly created leiningen project. I understand that those new to Java-land, the concept of the classpath, jars, maven all can be a little daunting, but that is the nature of Java as it stands today. Hope this helped [Edited for formatting]
In Getting started with Clojure/Emacs/Slime
Get a friend that uses it well and will be nearby (physically) for a few months. I didn't learn until I spent a summer with Slava (coffeemug) at my side willing to answer questions. Find ways to do as much as you can of what you normally do with your computer in emacs. If you use IRC a lot, use erc. If you use email a lot, try out gnus or rmail. Don't try to replace your web browser with w3m, that's just stupid and you'll hate it. Also, find a mode you really like. This will keep you using emacs whether you like it or not, until you really do like it. For me, it was gdb-mode. For most, it's one of the inferior repl modes (slime for lisp or clojure or whatever, ruby, python). I've heard good things about http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit, but I've never tried it.
In Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

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