"Feline Herd" Offers Easier Package Management For Emacs

First time accepted submitter chris.kohlhepp writes "The Emacs editor just got consolidated package management with "Feline Herd", offering 2000+ packages under one roof. No struggle with convoluted keyboard shortcuts — only easy GUI navigation via toolbar buttons! Every conceivable programming language is handled. Cuts the Emacs learning curve to a minimum for learners."

Comments

Yawn

[BringYourOwnBacon]

Wake me when there's a Vim equivalent.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

well. you can always run Vim inside of Emacs

captcha: satisfy

Re:Yawn

[smittyoneeach]

Yes, emacs, in its glorious tolerance of even the worst free ideas, sports a Vim-equivalent mode.
This is typically discarded after the vi-recovery phase.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

There won't be a vim equivalent for at least 20 more years. Once the grognards are gone vi will get a GUI but not before.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to sleep, it is not going to happen anytime soon.

Re:Yawn

[Coryoth]

Yes, emacs, in its glorious tolerance of even the worst free ideas, sports a Vim-equivalent mode.

For users new to the world of UNIX editors Emacs supports the simpler Vi emulation via

(setq global-map (make-sparse-keymap))

which faithfully emulates a novice user's experience of vi.

Re:Yawn

[jellomizer]

Emacs A text editor with Mainframe methodology. We have a big honking computer, lets make sure we stuff as many features in it as possible, so we don't need to install other editors.

VI A text editor with a Mini-Computer methodology. The computer isn't as powerful as a mainframe so it is smaller and lighter, without every feature under the sun. However we expect data entry type of people using it so it is designed for fast keyboard interaction.

Granted with Modern PC's we can run either without much of a hassle. However compared to some modern alternatives like Eclipse or Notepad++ they tend to feel more dated.

Re:Yawn

[BrokenHalo]

It comes as no surprise that the first post is a bump to vi(m), and I (for one), don't really care that much. Whatever rocks your boat, say I.

But the GUIfication of emacs is sad. The beauty of emacs is that as a text editor, it runs happily in console mode as well as in X11.

I came across an instance not long ago when having installed a server system (i.e. without X11) from binaries, I fired up emacs to edit a config file, and it spat errors due to missing gtk libraries. That really pissed me off.

The good news is that TECO, the direct ancestor to emacs still exists. The thing about TECO (Tape Editor/COrrector) is that although the wetware address space needs to be quite large to remember all those line-transmission-noise commands, if you use it a lot for a month or two, your muscle memory kicks in automatically. There is no menu, no GUI, no cruft, just a lean, fast and really scriptable editor that gets the job done.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that vim has many, many, many more syntax and indent files, and more packages ship them than anywhere else. So for actual productive editing vim wins out significantly. While emacs has very little support in comparison, even considering external files. Granted, emacs is an interpreter for a text and buffer-oriented lisp dialect. Not an editor in itself. I think that's the main issue with these sorts of arguments and the ever-hilarious-pee-myself-from-laughing-not-old-at-all "emacs is a great OS but poor editor" joke.

Re:Yawn

[jellomizer]

That is VIM not VI.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody probably installed the wrong package. Most (if not all) Linux distributions have a emacs package that doesn't depend on X.

Re:Yawn

[DuckDodgers]

Okay, I have a really stupid question - what do Emacs aficionados use for the "Meta" key?

By far, the single biggest reason I prefer Vim to Emacs is that I can do "Esc" with Ctrl-[. So more than 99% of the time, I'm working with my fingers staying within one key below or two keys above home row, with the sole exception of my left pinkie which hits the Ctrl key. Using "Alt" as the Emacs Meta key starts to cramp my hands very quickly, and pulling the ring or middle fingers down or the thumbs over to the Alt key is much slower.

So I see Emacs as the technically superior, more flexible editor but Vim as the more ergonomic one, and I am staying with Vim. I'm hoping there's something simple I missed - so what is it?

Re:Yawn

[jkauzlar]

I have no problem with the 'alt' key, and find it easier than jumping to the escape key in vim. Furthermore, in vim, I have a problem where I forget what mode I'm in, and I end up mangling a bunch of lines every time I type something :)

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/gui.html

Re:Yawn

[xaxa]

By far, the single biggest reason I prefer Vim to Emacs is that I can do "Esc" with Ctrl-[.

The same combination works for me in Emacs. Meta is escape, alt, or Ctrl-[.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use an old school keyboard with a real meta key!

Re:Yawn

[swilly]

Okay, I have a really stupid question - what do Emacs aficionados use for the "Meta" key?

Emacs will usually use either the Super key (usually called the Windows key) or the Alt key with the Esc key as a fallback (Esc doesn't use cording). I prefer the Super key but in the last few years distributions have been reserving that key for the window manager, so they intercept the key before it gets to Emacs. The real problem with Alt is with the terminal, where Alt+F opens the file menu instead of moving forward one word, which forces me to turn off the menu bar to use Emacs mode in bash. It isn't a big deal, and it is a lot easier to adjust to than wrestling with the WM and xmodmap.

Alt isn't the ideal key to be chording, but after a little practice it becomes second nature. I have to say, I have seen people buy vi friendly keyboards with the Esc key above the tab, but I've never seen anyone actually use Ctrl-[ when they didn't have to.

Re:Yawn

[DuckDodgers]

Well again, the regular Escape key is annoying to use, I have to take my left hand completely off the regular keyboard position to get to it. Ctrl-[ is comparatively easy.

I could remap Esc (or Alt, for that matter) to the Caps Lock, but it would drive me crazy every time I used that key on a machine where I had forgotten to make the change.

I mangle lines occasionally too, but not often enough to be a problem.

Re:Yawn

[DuckDodgers]

Meta is also Ctrl-[? Damn. Thanks for the information.

Re:Yawn

[DuckDodgers]

I just find Ctrl-[ much easier than moving my left hand up to hit the Escape key. I don't want to remap Esc to Caps Lock or anything similar because it's inevitable I'll log on to some server or su to some account that doesn't have the remap, and then I'll drive myself bonkers toggling Caps Lock over and over.

Thanks for the response, maybe I should just give up and start working on making frequent use of the Alt key feel natural.

Re:Yawn

[Cito]

They will never beat or compete with the ease of use that is Pico

Pico editor > all with simplicity

Re:Yawn

[elysiuan]

eVIL mode is better. Any vivivi users should check that out instead.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't happen, this wa scratch [programming] post. -- Vim isn't "gui" enough.

Re: Yawn

[turbidostato]

"I fired emacs to edit a config file"

So your penance came along with your sin. You tried to edit a config file with emacs instead of vim. You diserve what came later

Re: Yawn

[turbidostato]

What!!?? You don't have seven fingers on each hand!? No wonder you have troubles: you chose the wrong editor given your disability!

Re:Yawn

[Samantha Wright]

It dates back to the PDP-10 days and the ASR-33. The "ALT MODE" key was located about where tab is now, so they were the same in ITS, the operating system under which the first Emacs versions were developed.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

On original teletype keyboards, the escape and control key were next to each other where nowadays the capslock is located.
That explains why vi used these two keys for often used functions.

I actually map the control key to the capslock key, it saves quite a lot from cramp in your fingers.
In OS X doing this mapping is very easy, in Linux a lot harder and I am not sure if you can do this in windows.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm grandparent, and somehow I came across this post again. I know it was vi, but I have came to assume people actually mean vim. For some bizarre reason everyone uses it interchangeably except for when they have nothing else to fall back on and then pull out the "No, I meant vi as in vi not vim!" card. I was merely making an educated guess since it seems silly for someone to compare emacs proper to vi itself. No one does that and if they did it'd be an unfair comparison. You may as well just compare pine to emacs, or perhaps teco to notepad.

Re:Yawn

[su5so10]

If you prefer running emacs in text mode (as I do), just run "emacs -nw".

Re:Yawn

[su5so10]

Ctrl-[ is ESC independent of editor. Ctrl-(whatever) is generally (whatever) - 0x40 (in ASCII coding). And [ is 0x5b and (0x5b - 0x40) is 0x1b which is ESC.

Re:Yawn

[Mister Liberty]

Vim has no additional packages.
It is supposed to be complete.
The operative word here being 'supposed'.
Dream on.

Re:Yawn

[jrumney]

By far, the single biggest reason I prefer Vim to Emacs is that I can do "Esc" with Ctrl-[.

You can do Esc with C-[ in Emacs too. And Esc is equivalent to Meta (for keyboards without a modifier key that can be assigned to meta).

Re:Yawn

[laptop006]

It's existed for longer than this one in emacs and is called Vundle.

https://github.com/gmarik/vundle

Re:Yawn

[DuckDodgers]

Thanks, but someone pointed that out above. Somehow I thought it was only a Vim feature - I was reading Vim tips somewhere and I saw it suggested.

WONDER WHY LINUX/DESKTOP WILL NEVER HAPPEN !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not !! This is just a glimpse !!

"divergent package manager paradigms"

[Overunderrated]

Oh great, I just heard about this potentially useful new tool, and it's already been forked into competing factions!

As of Emacs 24, package management is integrated, but yet again there are divergent package manager paradigms (EL-Get & ELPA) and a number of repositories exist for these. They are not pre-configured.

Re:"divergent package manager paradigms"

[Phillip2]

The different factions do different things. ELPA is server based, but works with a raw Emacs. el-get gets files in a number of ways, but I suspect that git checkouts are the most common. But you need git installed.

I suspect it will come together a bit more eventually though.

Phil

too much package management

[stenvar]

This would have been great 20 years ago. But these days, I can just apt-get install Emacs packages. Of course, on some other platforms, this may still be useful, but on Linux systems with built-in package management, these extra application specific package management systems can cause version conflicts and are best avoided.

Re:too much package management

[Anonymous Coward]

This may not sound like a big deal, but sometimes it is nice to not have to do apt-get install since here on my work machines we dont have root permissions and have to ask the admins to install things for us. I like the fact that for emacs packages all you have to do is drop the elisp file in a particular folder, run it through compiler and point it in my .emacs.

Re:too much package management

[jrumney]

This seems to be the equivalent of a source distribution of a program whose sole purpose, once you've compiled it yourself and installed it, is to add universe and multiverse to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. As a long term and loyal Emacs user, even I'm failing to see the justification for a front page slashdot story.

Re:too much package management

[Hatta]

Depends on what you're doing. I do some bioinformatics with Bioconductor. Even on Debian Sid, the r-bioc- packages get out of date fast. If I install Bioconductor manually, all I have to do is update from within R. If I install Bioconductor with apt, I have to wait until someone else packages it. This very frequently makes the difference between getting the work done and not.

Re:too much package management

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, this is a huge pain in the neck for a user who wants centralized package management. My package manager is very capable, I want to use it for every piece of software on the system. Rubygems? Feline Herd? Gowhatever? Why do I need new cute names for doing the same damn thing my package manager already does - but with worse dependency checking, less update capabilities, and other irritations?

At least CPAN seems to be sane, as it seems to be perfectly content to exist as a passive repository I can use with whatever OS I feel like.

Re:too much package management

[Phillip2]

The problem with these is that they get out of date; more over, if you use emacs a lot, then having to use different package management systems on different operating systems is also a pain. Likewise, with tools like R.

So, it all depends on your application and your requirements. I a combination of ELPA style packages, and checkout git repositories for my Emacs package management. And, yes, version conflicts happen. But, the alternative of living with very old packages isn't always great either.

Re:too much package management

[stenvar]

I use Emacs and R a lot, but I don't think this makes my life easier in its current form. The Ubuntu and Debian packages aren't that much out of date. And mixing Ubuntu and application packages frequently causes problems.

Mind you, I'm not complaining that people are investing time in this. But OS and application packagers need to sit down together and figure out how to make these application-specific package management systems and OS package management systems work together better.

Re:too much package management

[Tarlus]

It has its pros and its cons. On one hand, I really like the idea of only having one package manager handle everything. No need to keep track of different utilities and all their different syntaxes.

On the other hand, a distro-specific package repository is never as fresh as an application-specific repository. Debian is a prime example of this. It has many but not all perl modules, and not all of them are up to date. CPAN, by comparison, tends to have the latest, and of a fuller variety. But CPAN doesn't necessarily handle dependencies with finesse so I've had to fall back on installing perl packages from the distro. So the RHEL machine I've been expected to develop with at work is using an ungodly combination of CPAN and YUM packages to give me everything I need.

Trying to get off of that system as soon as I can...

Re:too much package management

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be better to have a deb repository with all of your cpan modules in it? That lets you make use of apt's superior dependency resolution while still being more up to date than Debian. I see things like rubygems, cpan, etc to be a case of NIH syndrome.

Before people go off and bitch about how apt isn't cross platform, there is no real reasons that "rubygem" or "cpan" can't be apt behind the scenes, or that a repository of rpm packages and whatnot couldn't be assembled.

Re:too much package management

[Tarlus]

Yeah, that solution makes the best sense to me. As the manager of those repositories, you'd have to make them available to every major distro out there to keep everyone happy, meaning you'd have to generate packages for every perl module in each of their differing formats, which could become an unruly pain in the arse.

Compare this to the easy solution: releasing one package per distro, your own package manager. I'm no expert on the subject though I'd imagine this is why things are the way they are.

Re:too much package management

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be better to have a deb repository with all of your cpan modules in it? That lets you make use of apt's superior dependency resolution while still being more up to date than Debian. I see things like rubygems, cpan, etc to be a case of NIH syndrome.

Before people go off and bitch about how apt isn't cross platform, there is no real reasons that "rubygem" or "cpan" can't be apt behind the scenes, or that a repository of rpm packages and whatnot couldn't be assembled.

CPAN existed before apt, how can you even talk about NIH or no reason for it existing (i say existing because it could obviously not have been created with apt behind the scenes when apt did not exist)

Re:too much package management

[Anonymous Coward]

As for Ruby, it's not really used that often for packaged software. Gems are rarely completely forward- or backward-compatible. In most cases, you will have very specific dependency requirements for your custom application which are managed by the developers, not the ops team.

(OK, you could build your own dpkgs, but editing the gem dependency list is much easier.)

Re:too much package management

[znrt]

My package manager is very capable, I want to use it for every piece of software on the system. Rubygems? Feline Herd? Gowhatever? Why do I need new cute names for doing the same damn thing my package manager already does ...?

exactly, why? don't see the problem. if it's available in your package manager just go for it. if it is not ... there is at least *some* package management available. these aren't simple apps. rubygems, emacs, eclipse, nodejs ... are all extensible building tools where dependency management is a fundamental requirement. since they are also mostly platform-agnostic having its own dependency management system just makes sense, and it does in no way preclude your favorite package manager from maintaining it.

Re:too much package management

[ldierk]

On a lot of servers at customer sites emacs is not installed. vi on the other hand is available on every *nix server I have ever encountered. So at least for config editing I'm often forced to use vi.

Re: too much package management

[turbidostato]

Which ends up being nothing but the old dll hell in new robes. Youngsters nowadays...

Re:too much package management

[Baki]

Usually only a fraction of available packages for a certain system (like CPAN for perl, or eclipse 'bundles') is available directly as OS-level package (such as deb or rpm). For the rest you're on your own, or you use CPAN etc. and now maybe feline-herd for emacs (though I've fared well without it for 25 years).

Re:too much package management

[stenvar]

True. But that doesn't change the fact that the current situation is confusing and causes serious problems. Somehow something needs to be done: either application package management systems need to learn how to deal with OS package management systems (by installing OS version-appropriate add-on packages), or OS package management systems need to figure out how to defer to application package management systems.

As for Feline Herd, even as a heavy Emacs user, I find it extremely rare that there is a package that I need that isn't in Ubuntu.

Ahh, EMACS

[Chris Mattern]

Truly, it would be the world's most perfect operating system, if only it had a decent text editor.

Re:Ahh, EMACS

[davidbrit2]

Well, at least it's got a good package manager now.

Re:Ahh, EMACS

[Anonymous Coward]

How long are we going to continue this annoying joke?

Re:Ahh, EMACS

[Chris Mattern]

As long as people keep sticking new widgets into EMACS, I imagine.

Re:Ahh, EMACS

[knobo]

That is also fixed. The fix is called cua-mode.

An Honest Question:

[Lisias]

What's the EMACS' relevance nowadays?

I'm not arguing about functionality, VI vs EMACS, or whatever. I'm just asking about the role it's playing on software development in this modern days.

By the way: I'm a Eclipse heavy user, and I use VIM now and them to quick and dirty linux configuration files editing. I flirted with LUCID EMACS some years ago, when I was looking for a good SGML editor - and at that time, EMACS appeared to be the best one available.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

It let's old timers who are too lazy to update their skill set continue to pretend that they're still relevant and that the reason they can't get a job and are sat at home playing in Emacs is obviously ageism and nothing to do with their inability to adapt to changing development practices.

Oh, you mean what's it's practical use? No, it doesn't have one anymore over other much more productive tools.

Re:An Honest Question:

[H0p313ss]

It lets people be elitist and factional, of course.

Ah yes.... still using Emacs in 2013 is elitist. Of course.

Is that same way that providing universal healthcare is elitist?

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we stopped capitalizing it years ago, just like we did with Fortran. Use whatever you want, I don't care, but Emacs is still the editor I use whenever it is reasonable, and probably always will. By the way, on OS X, Aquamacs is a decent GUI version. Anyway, it's a text editor, who cares what you use. (Yes, it's much more than that... but it's not like it serves you coffee, and neither does any other.)

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an old-timer. Emacs is excellent for developing small personal applications on linux. And it's "difficulty curve" is severely overstated.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs with packages like ProofGeneral, agda-mode, tuareg-mode, haskell-mode, SLIME and so on is the most convenient (or sometimes the only) frontend to some of the finest programming languages and theorem provers. On top of that there's org-mode for everything else from managing notes, writing big documenets, doing spreadsheet stuff and the like. I often call Emacs the Eclipse for the rest of us. It's not so much a mere editor but a platform to build interfaces to other tools on.

Not that people who only care about their own use cases would be particularly impressed by what other people do with Emacs. Me, I don't care. I get my work done in Emacs, thank you very much.

Re:An Honest Question:

[ebno-10db]

It let's old timers who are too lazy to update their skill set ...

If you consider a person's editor of choice a significant part of their "skill set", then you must have a very low bar for "skill sets".

Re:An Honest Question:

[Tarlus]

Ah yes.... still using Emacs in 2013 is elitist. Of course.

It would be more accurate to generalize that and say that there exist people who use this kind of software and develop an "elitist" or "purist" attitude. I've seen it happen with all manner of TUI and CLI software. Also with *nix operating systems in general. Basically anything with a steep learning curve.

Even in 2013. The statement is "I prefer more complicated software than what you use, so that makes me smarter than you." Of course not everybody has this attitude, but there are some who do.

Re:An Honest Question:

[ebno-10db]

Emacs with packages like ProofGeneral, agda-mode, tuareg-mode, haskell-mode, SLIME and so on is the most convenient (or sometimes the only) frontend to some of the finest programming languages and theorem provers.

Agreed. One of the reasons I've stuck with Emacs is because it seems to have a mode for every language ever created, and Emacs runs on almost every platform ever created. It's closest competition in that respect seems to be Eclipse. I may well switch because a number of the embedded development environments I use are moving towards being Eclipse based, and I hate switching between editors. Once I get used to it the commands in an editor become almost instinctive, so I can concentrate on the code rather than the editor.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Tarlus]

Different users have their own reasons, but I like to be able to remotely connect via SSH to edit files directly. No need for FTP, VNC, X11 forwarding, etc.

For web development on a remote server, this has proven to be very handy for me.

Re:An Honest Question:

[aaaaaaargh!]

I'll give you an honest answer, although many people won't like it. It's better than Eclipse once you've mastered the learning curve. It's fast, responsive, totally programmable and cusomizable, and supports more programming languages and extensions than any other editor.

I told you that you wouldn't like the answer...

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Eclipse for four years alongside Emacs, but never got the hang of it. Eclipse wants to take up a huge part of my screen; Emacs has no problem occupying a slice at the edge. I use macros with C-x ( and C-x o all the time; I don't believe similar flexibility is there in Eclipse. Version control integration with Emacs is effortless (although not too bad with Eclipse, either).

I run Emacs over SSH connections all the time, I mean several hours a day, at work and at home. Eclipse over the network is too slow to be really usable.

Compiling with M-x compile is much more practical than Eclipse. Emacs can integrate with all of the esoteric build scripts you can think of. I never figured out how to teach Eclipse that.

Where Eclipse beat emacs (at the time, anyway) was Java debugging. Gud mode didn't support Java. So I used emacs for Java editing and Eclipse for debugging.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Its great when you are trying to build code that doesn't have an associated IDE project (or you can't install or don't want to use the associated IDE). You can run 'make' from EMACS and if there are any errors, it will provide you a link to the file. No setup required. Outside that, the only advantages I know of is that it supports virtually any language. So you can learn one tool, and use it for all your development. And, it loads quickly and doesn't hog memory like some IDE's.

Re:An Honest Question:

[swilly]

What's the EMACS' relevance nowadays?

Sometimes a task is too hard and repetitive in a traditional editor, but too trivial to require a script. For such tasks, an editor with good macro support is a must, and nothing comes close to Emacs or vim for macro support.

I still prefer writing code in Emacs, though some tasks are much better done in an IDE. I tend to use both, and I have Emacs and the IDE detect when a file has changed and revert to the filesystem version. This way I can switch between them depending on what I'm trying to do.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Bearhouse]

Hi, oldtimer here.
I know plenty of recent and 'more productive tools', as well as the older stuff.
Also, I know the correct usage of "let's"...which your modern tool appears to have missed.
(Clue: "let us" rather than "allows")

Sometimes the tool is the thing behind the keyboard.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Darinbob]

This occurs with with shallow learning curves. Ie, IDEs which are simple point and click, but which have very difficult to find menu entries or options, obscure plugins to find, etc. Then you'll find the know it all who says "how come you're spending 5 minutes doing that manually instead of spending hours finding the more efficient solution that I use?"

Re:An Honest Question:

[Darinbob]

What is the relevance of Unix today? Seriously, Unix is around because it is still useful and still does stuff better than the alternatives. Emacs which is only trivially older than Unix is around because it is still useful and still does stuff better than the alternatives. This is not a set of macros running inside of TECO anymore, it has changed since then.

Lucid Emacs was ok, but things have greatly evolved since then as well. The only real hiccup in the Emacs world I find is on Windows. Native versions use native file name schemes which is bad and they don't interoperate well with Cygwin, but non-native versions often want X11 which is clumsy to use on Windows. So on Windows I used XEmacs (direct descendant of Lucid). However on MacOS I use Aquamacs which is very nice and well integrated with Mac way of doing things. Biggest problem for all of them is finding a decent font; you want and need a fixed point font but those are very often the ugliest ones on a system and so you're forced to hunt down third party fonts (same problem with using terminal and console windows).

The only real thing it has that separates it from the typical IDE is that it doesn't have windows glued together in MDI style; you can lay out individual windows to look similar but you can't resize them on the fly without readjusting them all. But it did the stuff IDEs do long before IDEs were around; it had language sensitive modes and coloring, integration with compiler and build, integration with source code control. If it's not there then you can write it. And that's why there are so many packages for it now and why you need a package manager.

In software development today it is still active. I am using it daily, and at work I see plenty of people using it, or vi, or slickedit, or even IDEs. Even by people under thirty. You are always more efficient with tools that you know and are familiar with than reverting to a simplified form of point and click or referring to key binding cheat sheets. I am certainly not going to be elitist and tell some xyzedit user that my editor can do it better, and yet I see people who think that it's ok to bash all text editors on general principle, with misguided ideas that we're wasting hours a day.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Darinbob]

I only used Eclipse for C++, and it was clumsy there because it was an external plug-in and felt like a hasty afterthought compared to Java. When it did work it was ok, but the whole IDE style of an app that takes over everything seems wrong. Ie, I want two copies side be side because I need two editing windows visible at the same time, but that is completely opposed to the Windows style of IDE which Eclipse has adopted. I don't need these little sliver of sub-windows all of the place but we're stuck with them because that's what the Windows style of IDE wants that Eclipse has adopted. Lots of nice tools, but all hidden behind a lot of menus.

Now if you could plug in an Emacs frame inside of Eclipse that would be great. Most I've ever gotten is for IDEs is to have them use emacsclient when I want to edit files. Ie, emacs for editing, IDE for class browser. Problem is that most IDEs can not be customized easily, or at least not as easy as Emacs, so you're stuck working how the IDE intends for you to work in its one-size-fits all approach.

Re:An Honest Question:

[H0p313ss]

Then you'll find the know it all who says "how come you're spending 5 minutes doing that manually instead of spending hours finding the more efficient solution that I use?"

Guilty... However, you know you're doing it right when people thank you for pointing them at easier ways rather than glaring at you until you leave.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Phillip2]

Well, the editor is really good. It's fast and light. It's works with pretty much every language every invented and several that haven't yet. It integrates fantastically with all the different version control systems out there. You can plug it into any command line tool that you want. It's got find and grep support. You can connect to remote machines via ssh. You can use it entirely without a mouse. It has some incredible buffer and file switching facilities that mean you can open the right file instantly. It's got org-mode, which is a work of insane genius. If you do lisp it has paredit which has been widely copied.

You can configure it however you like. I configure it so that it does different things on different machines but feels that same to me; I've also got a custom colour scheme for use on my laptop, when it's sunny, It works over X, so I can use my desktop while plugged into the wall; you can also have two people editing the same file in different places this way. When it doesn't have a mode for what every you are editing, it's not that hard to write one. You can release these and people will help to improve them for you.

it's not as polished at editing Java as Eclipse that's true. It's a jack of all trades. If I worked on one project, in one language, I would use eclipse (or whatever was best for that one language). Because I switch a lot I use emacs. Actually, at the moment, I am doing a lot of clojure, so I'd use Emacs anyway. But that's a side issue.

Re:An Honest Question:

[The Cat]

Emacs is the most powerful software application ever written. It has a steep learning curve but once you know it, you are a Jedi who has constructed their own lightsaber.

The longer you use it, the more powerful it gets.

Re:An Honest Question:

[MarcoAtWork]

I think you are trolling but I'll bite, I work in python mainly these days, and emacs is way, way, way faster than eclipse (which a lot of my coworkers use) at doing pretty much everything, from code completion, to 'tell me where this method is defined' to 'load a file that has a similar name to this in the project', to source control integration, to 'open with exactly the same window/buffer configuration I had yesterday when I quit', to all sorts of other tasks. Not to mention that it never crashes for no reason, it doesn't just "hang" at random times during the day, doesn't use a ton of RAM, etc. etc. etc.

I am really not sure how 'changing development practices' have anything to do with what editor one uses, especially considering when said editor is a LOT better than any of the 'new' alternatives once you get past the learning curve, and once you deal with the learning curve once you will be fine for all sorts of other projects, languages, etc. I have been using emacs as my sole development environment since the early 90s and the few months I spent back then learning my way around have paid themselves back in spades.

Regarding this article I am not really sure what the purpose of a 'package manager' for emacs is, if I need something I just google it on emacswiki.org, download the .el file, add whatever config variables are needed in my .emacs.el and that's it, no need for a package manager for that (not to mention I want in general to keep any extra .el files in ~/elisp, where as of right now I have about 35 megs of packages, and not in the general system install, because when I want emacs on a new host I can just copy it over).

Re:An Honest Question:

[The Cat]

The sound of a wiseass unemployed 19 year old "programmer" who does not understand the Tao.

Make a payroll, son. Then come back and lecture us.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Lisias]

I used Eclipse for four years alongside Emacs, but never got the hang of it. Eclipse wants to take up a huge part of my screen; Emacs has no problem occupying a slice at the edge.

I totally agree. Using Eclpse on a single head machine is a pain in he arse. I confess, I like Eclipse - it works well for my need (not all, but most of them), but it's a huge screen eater.

My current set up is a notebook with a 22 inches monitor attached. Eclipse lives on the big screen, with space enogh to be useful. All other tasks go to the notebook's screen - I miss my old 17" HP Pavillion, but this 14" screen does the job.

I use macros with C-x ( and C-x o all the time; I don't believe similar flexibility is there in Eclipse. Version control integration with Emacs is effortless (although not too bad with Eclipse, either).

You're right. Eclipse don't do macros (or if it does, I never found it! =P). I don't use Eclipse CMS integration, I prefer a dedicate tool to do that. A huge part of my job is legacy systems maintenance, and I don't mind refactoring code to meet my maintenance needs. I understand that most programmers don't fix what's not broken, but on my line of duty I must give a quick and precise response to every system bad-functioning, and bad code prevents me to do that.

Being this the main reason I'm tagging with Eclipse: Java refactoring using Eclipse is almost painless. There's better refactoring tools for Java around, but Eclipse is good enough for my job.

I run Emacs over SSH connections all the time, I mean several hours a day, at work and at home. Eclipse over the network is too slow to be really usable.

Compiling with M-x compile is much more practical than Eclipse. Emacs can integrate with all of the esoteric build scripts you can think of. I never figured out how to teach Eclipse that.

I do a lot of JAVA EE programming, and Eclipse - at least until now - is unbeatable on this task.

For plain Java development of (new) programs, however, sometimes Eclipse just gets in the way. Since I'm writing the code, I don't need all that Error;/Warnings that Eclipse automatically detects on the code (and that save my ass uncountable times)

Where Eclipse beat emacs (at the time, anyway) was Java debugging. Gud mode didn't support Java. So I used emacs for Java editing and Eclipse for debugging

I totally agree. Debugging multi threaded systems is painless with Eclpse. This and refatoring are the main reasons I adopted Eclipse.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Lisias]

The only real thing it has that separates it from the typical IDE is that it doesn't have windows glued together in MDI style

What counts points to me. I simply HATE MDI. I would choosea "GIMP" style IDE anyday, if I could find one. It would be marvelous be able to use a multi-windowed Eclipse on my two headed system, the same way it's nice to do it with GIMP.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Lisias]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I found your considerations very informative.

When doing Java EE development, I don't think it will worth even try to replace Eclipse to do the job.

However, I also develop code using Python, ANSI C and C++, and on also on embedded and retro systems (mainly using CC65) as hobby, and I found Eclipse just too much clousy for these tasks, It simply doesn't worths the pain (I found using Notepad++ and a CygWin shell for ASM development easier and faster than to even try to install and use the CC65 plugin for Eclipse).

Aquamacs and XEmacs (I use both Windows and Mac on development), based on your feedback, appears to worth a (new) try.

There's any "EMACS Crash Test Course for Dummies" that you would recommend? (I'm not a newbie on computing, but I have very few time available to try new things - any help on shortening the learning curve is heavily needed, and will be appreciated!).

Thanks.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Darinbob]

Actually, I'd rather have an option to choose what's better. I like GIMP, but it's style can drive me nuts when I can't find the toolbar because it's hidden behind my browser (mostly because I use it on windows where I don't have multiple desktops). It's style is good when it's the only application running, which never actually happens. Similarly, Emacs sometimes annoys me with it's debugger windows and I would like to attach it when I use it, but at other times detach it. There are some IDEs I've seen that do let you detach the editor window.

What would be nice is a smart manager of the windows. Ie, just show me a tiny one line messages output (ala emacs) but then expand it to a larger window if I click in it because then I want to see more of it; and shrink that class/file browser window and only expand it when I click in it or use the appropriate key binding. This is not the same thing as manually shrinking it with the mouse like most IDEs have.

But ya, two monitors is a great reason for splitting stuff up.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs comes with a built-in tutorial. It must be there in the help menu (didn't check), but if not, try "ctrl-H t".

Emacs also documents itself with an "info" system, which you can activate from emacs with the "ESC x info" command. That's an extensive reference. Nobody masters it all, but you will find a subset that suits your needs.

I use the regular GNU emacs. I don't know if those other offshoots work exactly the same way.

Re:An Honest Question:

[Lisias]

(mostly because I use it on windows where I don't have multiple desktops)

There's a little tool from SysInternals called Desktops that may be of use to you.

It's not Mission Control (very, very far from it), but it can help if you don't need the same program in more than one "Desktop".

Re:An Honest Question:

[Darinbob]

I have used similar programs before. The ones I used did seem a bit buggy at times with windows vanishing and such. So I've never come up with a good replacement. Which is ok becuase I mostly only use Windows for games, taxes, and the occasional light development.

Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[H0p313ss]

Canonical crowdfunds 7 million dollars in 7 days to build a phone that doubles as a PC and Slashdot has Emacs headlines.

ffs

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[Seumas]

Fine with me.

I'm tired of every fucking tech site on the planet being 90% cell phone news. Fucking christ, how many cell phones do you think I buy? Enough that I need 14 different stories every day about them on your front page?

Also, I wish I could think up something clever to say about Feline Herd package management. Something something pussies package blah blah. You do the work, I'm lazy.

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[EvilSS]

So did you submit the story about Canonical? No? Well them part of the problem you are.

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[H0p313ss]

Also, I wish I could think up something clever to say about Feline Herd package management. Something something pussies package blah blah. You do the work, I'm lazy.

How about "Antiquated extensible editor leaps with both feet into the 1990's by providing package management"

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[aminorex]

Just about any android phone doubles as a "PC" in the same sense. Canonical is an also-ran.

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[Darinbob]

How about "Smart Phones Discovered to Run Antiquated Operating System From the 70s, Hysteria Ensues!"

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[H0p313ss]

Just about any android phone doubles as a "PC" in the same sense. Canonical is an also-ran.

Your average phone does not have 4GB of RAM... so no, it's not the same.

Yes, Canonical is an also-ran. However, any competition is good and what they're doing is a million times more relevant in 2013 than freaking Emacs.

Re:Emacs? Is this Slashdot in 2013?

[The Cat]

How about "dumbfuck comments on text editor with dumb fucking dumbfuckery?"

EMACS SUCKS AND SO DOES YOUR MOTHER!

[magic maverick]

VIM & VI also suck. The standard editor is, ed. Obviously. Ed. "Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity."

Re:EMACS SUCKS AND SO DOES YOUR MOTHER!

[gmuslera]

Real programmers use emacs, at least when are in a hurry. Wonder if "felineherd install butterfly" works or is just builtin.

Re:EMACS SUCKS AND SO DOES YOUR MOTHER!

[Anonymous Coward]

Real programmers use emacs, at least when are in a hurry. Wonder if "felineherd install butterfly" works or is just builtin.

It's builtin.

butterfly is an interactive autoloaded Lisp function in `misc.el'.

(butterfly)

Use butterflies to flip the desired bit on the drive platter.
Open hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbance
ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the
upper atmosphere. These cause momentary pockets of higher-pressure
air to form, which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays,
focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit.
You can type `M-x butterfly C-M-c' to run it. This is a permuted
variation of `C-x M-c M-butterfly' from url `http://xkcd.com/378/'.

[back]

Re:EMACS SUCKS AND SO DOES YOUR MOTHER!

[Anonymous Coward]

When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their “edlin” on a Unix standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

Would love to give it a try but...

[aaaaaaargh!]

Seriously: No Readme, no installation instructions?

I've already installed another package manager, so how do I add this one? Is there any website other than the GIT repository?

Re:Would love to give it a try but...

[AnujMore]

The source, of course, is the documentation, come on!

Re:Would love to give it a try but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, of course. Didn't see that.

Still, a short Readme would be fine...

"Feline Herd?"

[Tarlus]

I believe the proper term is "clowder."

Re:"Feline Herd?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say you have pride but then I'd be lion.

Does it finally boot Linux ?

[Anonymous Coward]

... see Subject ...

And did someone finally wrote systemd support for it ?

As they say...

[Arancaytar]

maintaining a large package repository is like herding a bag of kittens.

Ya right

[Murdoch5]

I'm assuming to launch the GUI you need to do "CTRL + A + SHIFT + INS + X + F1 + ! + ALT + T", I don't believe Emacs has a simple learning curve in anyway shape or form, I've tried to learn / use Emacs many times over the last few years and it's never been a good go, this why I use Vim.

Re:Ya right

[Anonymous Coward]

"CTRL + A + SHIFT + INS + X + F1 + ! + ALT + T"

No *way* that's a real Emacs command. If it was there'd be at least three presses of the "Meta" key required.

Re:Ya right

[John Bokma]

Yeah, if only you could change key bindings, right?

Re:Ya right

[Culture20]

I'm betting you can type Meta-X then gnu-feline-herd-package-manager-for-emacs to start it too.

Re:Ya right

[Anonymous Coward]

EMACS is the most unstable editor in wide use that I'm aware of. Open enough windows and frames and it will die. Tramp is another big source of failures. It lags while scrolling, even on powerful hardware. Navigating among buffers is awful as it comes out of the box, which is really unacceptable for something one expects to handle lots of buffers well. The UI continues to be a clunky mess. Silly glitches like failing to respect arbitrary window geometry should have been long fixed.

It just sucks. Not in relation to any other editor. Just as a program on its own merits.

I've used EMACS. It has been a while but when I was fully invested I knew my way around and did real work. Fifteen years ago it was stable and better than everything else. Since then it has actually regressed wrt stability. I won't invest effort into an editor that crashes and sets me back.

There aren't any excuses for this I will accept. Blaming distribution packaging is not a valid excuse; redistribution through packaging systems is a reality. Failing to adapt to this reality is not acceptable. Other complex software survives packaging just fine, but when EMACS falls over you get the usual excuses about how the distros screw up EMACS.

Re:Ya right

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, if only You could find several comfortable combinations that are not yet taken

Re:Ya right

[The Cat]

I've been using Emacs daily for 7 years. It has never crashed once.

You're full of shit.

Re:Ya right

[IllusionalForce]

You forgot to press the foot pedals and playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata with the secondary keyboard. ...At least you tried.

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

EMACS gets a package manager!
Now the only thing this OS is missing is a text editor. Once they have that have, they'll be good to go.

CSI: Miami Vice

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Stallman was extremely turned on when he heard about this extension to EMACS.

I guess you could say he was.... (adjusts glasses)... feline herd.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

If Java is your only language...

[ShopMgr]

Vi is great if you are editing a line based language.
Eclipse is great if you are editing Java.
For everything else, Emacs.

If you are doing iterative programming, then keep running your JUnit Tests.
So, keep running mvn, make and ant from the Command Line.

If you are doing Functional Programming, then writing code Interactively is the "Cats Ass".
I prefer to write a function and execute it immediately!
No running JUnit Tests iteratively, which means running all the tests.

And yes, some of this is available in Eclipse and IntelliJ, but not as well integrated.

Re:If Java is your only language...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse is great if you are editing Java.

I'd recommend Netbeans or IntelliJ IDEA before I recommend Eclipse. Your right Eclipse is the Emacs of Java. It does a lot of things... slowly.

Re:If Java is your only language...

[Anonymous Coward]

Formatting your post in short lines like that makes it look like some sort of bizarre poetry. Especially the first paragraph, which looks like a failed haiku... ;-)

Re:What planet are you on?

[ebno-10db]

What type of idiot thinks:

>No struggle with convoluted keyboard shortcuts — only easy GUI navigation via toolbar buttons!

is a feature? Why on earth would you use Emacs if you don't intend to edit by muscle memory?

I think the GUI stuff is for package installation. I agree that if you don't have escape-meta-alt-control-shift for editing commands then Emacs isn't Emacs. I like having a menu driven backup for things I rarely use, but for stuff you commonly use keystrokes are much faster. Having to constantly switch between keyboard and mouse is very slow and clunky.

Lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Because using emacs is like herding cats sometimes.

So any cretin can use it now? Not smart!

[gweihir]

Professional tools require professional users. If Emacs is now dumbed down so any cretin can use it, it will likely not be usable for people that are not cretins in the near future. Guess that means I have to either stick with an old version, or look for a replacement that is still a professional tool...

$ sudo apt-get purge emacs* nano

[Anonymous Coward]

$ sudo apt-get purge emacs*

is all the emacs I need to know.

$ sudo apt-get purge nano
is all the nano I need to know to - I HATE IT WHEN A NEWLY INSTALLED SYSTEM DEFAULTS TO fracking NANO!!!!!

BTW, I say this as a reformed emacs user. I used emacs when I was new to UNIX, for about 6 months. Soon, I found myself dropping into vi-mode all the time to get things done. All-the-time. After about 9 months, I gave up and purged emacs, started using vi (pre-vim) and was happy. It also cleared up a crapload of storage on my Alpha. That machine was always running out of storage - only 2G disks back then and emacs ate too much.

From time to time, I do use Geany when a lite-Perl/Ruby/Python IDE is needed, but 95% of the time, I use vim.

Folks - stop bitching about vim and just learn it already. Vim is extremely capable - until you see an expert use it - you-have-no-idea how much it blows away every other editor ever made. All of them. I've used editors on almost every platform from pdp, OS360, MVS, TSO, DOS, Mac, UNIX, VAX, Widnows, routers ... they all suck in some way. vi works the same across every platform - imbedded to the fanciest OSX or workstation class machines. Learn vi and never learn any other editor again.

I've never seen emacs on a router - just sayin'.

Not exactly wowing them in Peoria

[Anonymous Coward]

"0 Downloads (this week)", says SourceForge. It may be an excellent solution, but not for a problem that anyone feels the need to have solved.

You can pry Acme from my cold dead hands.

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of bloat going around in the editor wars is just obscene. There are essentially about three editor worth your time depending on usage pattern:
Keyboard chording: MicroEmacs. Specifically the port Linus is using.
Keyboard+Mouse chording: Acme. There's the p9p version Rus is doing.
Command language: Sam. p9p again.

If this don't do the job, you might as well get Eclipse going cause anything short of a full blown IDE won't be enough anyhow.

I've tried emacs and vi(m)

[atomicxblue]

Hate them both. My ssh editor of choice is nano, mainly because it just stays out of my way, not switching to insert mode in the middle of typing. No archaic sequences of keys to bother with, either.

Re:I've tried emacs and vi(m)

[lennier]

Yep, same here. For editing config files, nano just works and works well.

What constantly blocks me from learning either Emacs or vi is that neither of them seem to coexist well with the industry-standard CUA keybindings that we use everywhere from Windows to Mac to Linux. And CUA has been out since, what, the mid 1980s?

Yes, it's nice to be able to program your editor in Lisp. It's not nice however to have an editor that thinks it's 1970 and that it owns your entire keyboard and screen, and doesn't know what a mouse is. Wake me up when Emacs can interpret Ctrl-X as cut, Ctrl-V as paste, Alt as raising a menu bar and F1 as help.

(I'm aware a thing called Emacs CUA Mode exists. However the Emacs wiki is not encouraging. "this conflicts with very important keybindings in Emacs". Yes, sorry, no, "it's half built and doesn't completely work" is the wrong answer. Next.)

Re:I've tried emacs and vi(m)

[jrumney]

The original CUA keys for Cut/Copy/Paste are Ctrl-Delete, Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert. Emacs has supported those out of the box for about a decade. cua-mode only conflicts with important Emacs keys if you are already in the habit of using those Emacs keys in a particular not-very-Emacsy way.

Now its a real OS

[MichaelSmith]

Previously the lack of a package manager was the only thing holding it up. All it needs is a good editor now.

Honest answer: "best editor to date"

[dltaylor]

I tried Eclipse, but the editor is pathetic, and there just wasn't enough other "goodness" to make up for it; same with Visual Studio. Further, Emacs does NOT leave the junk whitespace that bloats version control system repositories and breaks "make" syntax.

I do use vi(m) frquently when editing config files and shell scripts in active systems, because it works pretty well and doesn't leave the history (tilde) files around.

There is simply no other editor that I have found that combines huge cross-platform availability ('specially if you add microemacs for really resource-limited systems). Emacs gives me tremendous flexibility for handing multiple buffers, and handling them more efficiently than multiple windows, the macro recording capability has frequently simplified repetative tasks, and it takes up a lot less of the edit window with "features" I do not need. I use the language support in a limited way, mostly as a quick syntax checker ("missing paretheses" type of thing), but with the indent feature enabled, and really like that I can control the level at which the editor intrudes on my coding.

I would, infact, be much happier, if idiots would STOP trying to write their own editors and simply wrap Emacs (or Vi(m)) in the edit window, because they really cannot ever do better, or, apparently, as well.

Re:Honest answer: "best editor to date"

[Lisias]

I tried Eclipse, but the editor is pathetic, and there just wasn't enough other "goodness" to make up for it; same with Visual Studio. Further, Emacs does NOT leave the junk whitespace that bloats version control system repositories and breaks "make" syntax.

Not sure if would be sufficient to you, but I solved this shitty whitespacing problem using a plugin called AnyEdit Tools.

I totally agree with you that it's a lame solution to a problem that should not exist at first place (any other text editor I use, like Notepad++ and TextWrangler, chops trailing white spaces for me automatically), but if there's something else on Eclipse that would help you somehow, at least this specific problem can be solved.

Another Emacs package manager??

[mitch_feaster]

Emacs article on Slashdot?? Cue the "all it needs is a good editor"
comments...

In an effort to understand what sets this project apart from the other
options to the point of being worthy of Slashdot (although "worthy of
Slashdot" has taken on a new meaning in recent years) I checked out the
code and had a look around...

    * A grand total of 3 commits (including 2 one-liners)

      - First commit was less than 2 weeks ago. This is literally some
        dude's weekend project from a week and a half ago.

    * About 600 lines of code

    * About 1,300 lines of embedded XPM images

Definitely not noteworthy so far... "Unifying" all of the existing
solutions is fairly cool, but just wrapping them in a few toolbar
buttons is... not that cool...

Oh, and he's an OSX user.
/ducks