- Tired of writing Emacs configuration code? 🤯
- Afraid of or ever declared .emacs bankruptcy? 😰
- Don't want to spend your time writing Emacs Lisp code? 😳1
- Need to quickly access help now and later on specific topic? 🤔
- Want to learn Emacs and try several built-in and external packages? 😇
- Want a fast startup even with a large number of external packages installed? 😃
PEL might be for you! Then go ahead, install it2 or update it3 !
- PEL supports terminal Emacs launched from a shell and graphics Emacs launched from a shell or a GUI program like Windows Explorer, macOS Finder, Linux file managers, etc...
- Speed Emacs startup further with PEL fast startup mode command (see also ⅀ Fast Startup PDF4). PEL supports 2 different Emacs startup operation modes:
- The normal startup mode, using Emacs' standard package.el package manager with PEL's extensions that provide customization-driven package management built on Emacs easy customization to pick and chose packages and behaviours, all without having to write Emacs Lisp code. PEL enhances Emacs customization system: PEL provides keys to quickly access customization groups of Emacs built-in and external Emacs Lisp libraries even if they are not even loaded.
- The fast startup mode. It can achieve 0.1 second startup with over 230 external packages, see5. In fast startup you can use all external packages you have already installed in normal startup mode but now Emacs starts much faster. In fast startup PEL does not support download and installation of new external packages but just return to normal mode to do so. PEL provides 2 commands to switch modes:
- The pel-setup-fast (
<f11> M-S f) activates the fast startup mode. It bundles all external packages that use a single directory inside a single directory to reduce Emacsload-pathand sets up your Elpa directory for a fast startup. - The pel-setup-normal (
<f11> M-S n) restores the normal Emacs setup with package management capabilities and PEL's automatic package installation via customization.
- The pel-setup-fast (
- PEL supports Emacs 26 and later.
- For Emacs 27 and later the
pel-early-init-templateuser-option (which defaults to example/init/early-init.el) allows you to identify a PEL-compatible early-init.el file that PEL edits to control whether fast startup and package-quickstart feature are used.- PEL provides the pel-setup-with-quickstart command (
<f11> M-S q) to create and refresh all the package-quickstart files6 and pel-setup-no-quickstart (<f11> M-S M-q) to disable it.
- PEL provides the pel-setup-with-quickstart command (
- For Emacs 27 and later the
- PEL uses Emacs customization facility to control everything: the selection, installation and configuration of packages, the activation of various major and minor modes, the improvement of behaviour of various major and minor modes, the use of various features provided by PEL.
- PEL saves your customization data inside a file separate from your
init.elfile, providing an extra degree of freedom and control. This also gives you the ability to easily revision and clone your Emacs environment to other computers. - PEL provides enhanced and easy access to relevant customization buffers for your specific context. Each supported topic or major mode context has a PEL prefix key and each supported major mode uses the
<f12>key as the main prefix key. For instance in a C buffer, use<f12> <f1>to access the C-specific PEL PDF,<f12> <f2>to access the PEL customization buffer to activate C features, andf12> <f3>to the customization buffers controlling the major mode and related features. If they are not loaded PEL will load them for you after prompting. Even if the code was not written to support auto-loading of customization variables. - The classical way to control Emacs behaviour has been to write Emacs Lisp code to set variables. Although you can still do it with PEL you will benefit from PEL's integration better if you control all via the customization buffers and customization files. You can modify the behaviour by applying customization modification to test your changes and then save them to a file once you are happy with it.
- PEL supports the ability to have 2 independent customization files: one for Emacs running in terminal mode and another for Emacs running in graphics mode. PEL supports two sets of elpa directories to store the packages used for each mode when this independent dual customization mode is used. PEL provides the pel-setup-dual-environment command to activate this. Follow the installation instructions and see the ⅀ Customize PDF for more details.
- A PEL compatible Emacs init.el is available for you to use right from the beginning. Instructions are inside. You can use it as is or modify some of the options.
- For Emacs ≥ 27, PEL also provides a PEL compatible early-init.el. Instructions are inside. PEL will automatically install it if you want to use Emacs package quickstart feature available on Emacs ≥ 27. You can also modify it and add your own code. Instructions are located in the file.
- PEL comes with samples of Emacs custom files you can use with PEL to quickly activate features. After following the PEL installation steps, Copy one of these files into your
~/.emacs.d/emacs-customization.elfile then start Emacs and watch PEL download, install and activates the packages identified in the file you selected. - If you want to manage 2 set of customization files and package directory, one for Emacs in terminal mode and another for Emacs in graphics mode, use the pel-setup-dual-environment command (or
<f11> <f2> M-d) to activate dual independent customization. It will create the required customization files.
Emacs gets its power from the large set of built-in and external packages available for it. A large number of external packages are available from package repositories like GNU Elpa, MELPA. There are also Emacs Lisp files available on Github and Gitlab. PEL provides access to a growing number of these packages as described in the next section.
One of PEL's goals is to enhance the cohesion and the integration of these packages to provide a more pleasant and customizable user experience. PEL implements various convenience commands, easy-to-remember key bindings and glue control code to enhance several minor and major modes, allowing behaviour selection through customization and PEL use-option variables.
Some of the improvements created for PEL are fed back to the original project(s) but it's available inside PEL if the code has not yet been merged in the original project.
PEL also implements various template-driven text insertion for various programming and markup languages.
As PEL evolves the goal is to support for programming languages will increase and each fully supported programming language will come with a topic-oriented help PDF, enhanced electric key behaviours, enhanced navigation integrating various packages, etc...
- In normal mode, PEL controls the download, installation, configuration and activation of 229 top-level7 external packages through the use of easy-to-setup customization user-options that have a name that start with the "
pel-use-" prefix.- PEL can install packages from GNU Elpa, MELPA, and simple GitHub or Gitlab repositories even when the files have not been setup as an elpa-compliant package.
- Use the pel-cleanup command to remove deactivated packages not requested by PEL user-options, moving those packages from the
elpaorutilsdirectory to the corresponding attic directories for backup and later re-activation. - PEL controls the activation and loading of selected packages, with emphasis on:
- reducing Emacs initialization time to a minimum8 in all modes,
- providing key bindings when Emacs is running in both graphics mode and terminal mode,
- adding extra commands that complement Emacs and external packages.
- PEL integrates these packages and adds a large number of key bindings that mostly do not interfere with the standard Emacs key bindings (except for a very small few documented ones).
- PEL provides over 150 PDF topic-oriented reference sheets9 packed with symbol annotated, colour coded key bindings and command descriptions, with hyperlinks to Emacs manuals, external packages, articles and other useful references.
- See the PEL Index PDF10 as a starting point. For the best user experience, use a browser, like Firefox, that can render the PDF inline (as opposed to downloading it) so you can use the links quickly. Inside Emacs use
<f11> <f1>to open the PEL Index PDF and then navigate from it, or use<f12> <f1>to open the PDF describing the major mode of the current buffer and its key bindings.- Some major modes also support the opening of a language-specific PDF. This is done by using a key prefix:
C-u <f12> <f1>. For example this now opens a PDF on zsh when the command is issued from a buffer editing a zsh script, or a GNU Make PDF from a buffer editing a make file in GNU Make mode.
- Some major modes also support the opening of a language-specific PDF. This is done by using a key prefix:
- See the PEL Index PDF10 as a starting point. For the best user experience, use a browser, like Firefox, that can render the PDF inline (as opposed to downloading it) so you can use the links quickly. Inside Emacs use
PEL's Manual describes PEL features in more details. See:
- How to install PEL,
- How to setup GUI Emacs environment to control GUI launched Emacs PATH and other environment variables easily with a fast starting Emacs,
- PEL setup commands for dual customization and fast startup mode,
- PEL initialization command and PEL cleanup command,
- PEL Customization,
- PEL Key Bindings,
- PEL convenience features with PEL commands that extend several aspects of Emacs.
Warning
GitHub presently fails to render several reStructuredText files to HTML. They are currently working to resolve this issue.
- PEL provides over 465 extra commands. PEL commands extend the packages it supports and provides some of its own features.
- PEL provides 7 Hydra key bindings when the
pel-use-hydraand the topic specific user-options are activated.
PEL would not exist without the great software available for Emacs. Some of them are listed in the Credits section of the manual but the list is unfortunately incomplete as it grows continuously when PEL supports new packages. The external packages are identified in the PDF tables with the box symbol: 📦 with hyper-links to the author's project.
PEL is still evolving, with new packages being integrated, new documentation created and new features developed. The evolution is described in the NEWS file.
Questions, comments, constructive criticism, suggestions and requests are always welcome. Drop me a note in the wiki or in the discussion board!
Writing Emacs Lisp code is actually quite fun and rewarding. Lisp is a powerful programming language and Emacs opens up the door to that world if it's foreign to you. PEL should ease the introduction and you may decide to go your own way later. For those that prefer to stay away from Emacs Lisp and concentrate on other tasks you can use PEL and configure Emacs using its powerful customization system.↩
Unfortunately PEL installation is manual but it's not difficult. Detailed instructions for installing PEL are located inside section 2 of PEL manual.
- You essentially have to clone PEL's repo, start with a fresh
~/.emacs.ddirectory, open Emacs twice and run make in the PEL directory to byte compile PEL's files. You will have to update the init.el and early-init.el if you want to modify some options. And you may want to use some canned customization files. PEL installs and configure what you activate through customization. - See PEL manual table of contents to move around the manual.
- You essentially have to clone PEL's repo, start with a fresh
The instructions for updating PEL are located inside the Updating PEL section of the PEL manual.
- Essentially what's required is to get the latest changes using Git (with
git pull) and then runmakeagain.
- Essentially what's required is to get the latest changes using Git (with
All PEL PDF files have a large number of hyperlinks to other PDF files, Emacs manual pages, external packages and articles. Use a browser that is capable of rendering PDF files for the best user experience. The Mozilla Firefox browser does an excellent job at it since its version 78, under all operating system and is highly recommended.↩
Fast initialization: PEL code uses all the techniques to improve initialization speed. By default it starts quickly, delaying code as much as possible.
On my 2014 iMac running macOS Mojave in terminal mode running Emacs 26.3 I get the following startup time in normal startup mode (and without package-quickstart):
- with 182 packages, benchmark-init reports about 0.4 second startup-time,
- with 239 packages, benchmark-init reports about 0.6 second startup-time, see the benchmark-init report for it
Activate PEL fast startup mode to experience much faster initialization times:
- with 239 packages, in fast startup operation mode, benchmark-init reports about 0.1 second startup-time, see the benchmark-init report for that.
- The time reduction of fast startup mode depends on the number of packages that can be bundled by PEL. Those that have all their files in the same directory can be bundled.
With PEL it's possible to reduce this further by removing packages you do not need, without loosing their configuration:
- go to normal startup mode,
- disable un-required packages by setting their corresponding
pel-use-user-option to nil, - run the pel-cleanup command (with
M-x pel-cleanup). It will disable those packages by putting their packages inside an attic directory where you can retrieve them later.- If the removed packages are multi-directory package their removal will speed-up initialization in normal and fast-startup mode, otherwise it will only speed it up in normal mode.
Package Quickstart Support:
The pel-setup-with-quickstart command creates the package quickstart files and the early-init.el file if it's not already present.
Emacs
package-quickstart-fileuser-option identifies the name of your package quickstart file. When using PEL's independent customization for terminal/TTY and graphics Emacs PEL manages 2 package quickstart files: one for the terminal/TTY mode with that name and one for the graphics mode which has "-graphics" appended to its name.↩An external package may have dependencies. The dependencies are also installed. PEL currently provides access to 229 top-level external packages. The actual number of packages is larger when counting their dependencies (currently 48 extra packages installed as dependencies). From within PEL execute the pel-package-info command with prefix argument to get a full report (or just type
C-u <f11> ? e ?). Also notice the short report printed at the end the make-driven build of PEL.↩Fast initialization: PEL code uses all the techniques to improve initialization speed. By default it starts quickly, delaying code as much as possible.
On my 2014 iMac running macOS Mojave in terminal mode running Emacs 26.3 I get the following startup time in normal startup mode (and without package-quickstart):
- with 182 packages, benchmark-init reports about 0.4 second startup-time,
- with 239 packages, benchmark-init reports about 0.6 second startup-time, see the benchmark-init report for it
Activate PEL fast startup mode to experience much faster initialization times:
- with 239 packages, in fast startup operation mode, benchmark-init reports about 0.1 second startup-time, see the benchmark-init report for that.
- The time reduction of fast startup mode depends on the number of packages that can be bundled by PEL. Those that have all their files in the same directory can be bundled.
With PEL it's possible to reduce this further by removing packages you do not need, without loosing their configuration:
- go to normal startup mode,
- disable un-required packages by setting their corresponding
pel-use-user-option to nil, - run the pel-cleanup command (with
M-x pel-cleanup). It will disable those packages by putting their packages inside an attic directory where you can retrieve them later.- If the removed packages are multi-directory package their removal will speed-up initialization in normal and fast-startup mode, otherwise it will only speed it up in normal mode.
The source of the PEL PDF files is a single macOS Number spreadsheet file. It's also available in the Git pel-pdf-spreadsheet repo. I would have liked to find a way to create this with a markup flexible enough but I did not find one. Let me know if you know one that can build the same output.↩
All PEL PDF files have a large number of hyperlinks to other PDF files, Emacs manual pages, external packages and articles. Use a browser that is capable of rendering PDF files for the best user experience. The Mozilla Firefox browser does an excellent job at it since its version 78, under all operating system and is highly recommended.↩