When I’m looking at a diff in Emacs’s diff-mode, I usually use native functions like diff-apply-hunk to apply/revert or otherwise operate on hunks. Occasionally, though, I just want to kill (copy) part of the diff so I can do something else with it. When I do, I end up with leading – or + or […]

I often run Java programs like Android apps in my Emacs compilation buffer while I’m working on them, so I see Java stack traces there just like compile errors. Emacs is good at identifying compilation errors so you can jump straight to the source file and line, but not so much with stack traces. Here’s […]

I use Emacs, vc, and git all pretty heavily. I know the cool kids use magit and egg, but good old vc has stuck with me through four different “new hotness” version control systems – CVS, Perforce, Subversion, and now git – and I’m sure it will still be around for many more to come. […]

Update: Emacs 26.1 added official support for this with a new emacsclient –tramp option! The 26.1 manual isn’t online yet, but you can learn more with M-x info inside Emacs 26.1, Emacs => emacsclient options. I recently started running shells inside Emacs via shell mode, including ssh sessions to remote hosts using TRAMP. I’m pretty […]

I recently started running shells inside Emacs via shell mode, and so far I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve found a number of things to tweak, though, including the completions buffer, which is great except that it overstays its welcome and doesn’t close when you’re done with it. I searched the web and found Dmitriy […]

Mental context switches are evil. Some people handle them better than others, but not me. I handle them worse. I feel it, almost physically, when context switches whittle down my precious flow piece by piece. It hurts! Even something as small as switching between Emacs and the shell can hurt, especially when I do it […]

Here’s some Emacs Lisp for encoding flowed text a la RFC 2646. This is useful for composing email in Emacs. For example, if you use a separate email client and emacsclient as your editor, add this and (add-hook ‘server-switch-hook ‘flow-encode-buffer) to your .emacs to encode your emails as flowed text automatically. (defgroup flow-fill nil “Decoding […]

Emacs’s support for special buffer frames, specifically the special-display-function variable and friends, let you customize the way Emacs chooses a window and buffer for new frames that are displayed via display-buffer. Here’s Elisp code you can use as special-display-function that prefers existing windows and frames, as opposed to splitting the current window and frame, but […]