Re: porting crufty old init.el to package management

[Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt@polytechnique.org>]

Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com> writes:

> Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> I'm wondering, would anyone care to recommend especially worthy docs
>> for this process (guides, howto's, tutorials)? esp how best to
>> accommodate snippets of elisp (gists?)
>
> If you think of your init file more as '(comment)text with code',
> Org-Babel and the associated starter-kit
> (http://eschulte.github.io/emacs-starter-kit/) are definitely worth a
> try. 

This is the approach I'm following. To get you started, here is my
configuration loading config file (init.el). It basically loads
a current version of org, then tangles the "myconfig.org" file to create
the configuration

#+begin_src emacs-lisp
;; Turn off mouse interface early in startup to avoid momentary display
(if (fboundp 'tool-bar-mode) (tool-bar-mode -1))
(if (fboundp 'scroll-bar-mode) (scroll-bar-mode -1))

;; remember this directory
(setq emacsd-dir
      (file-name-directory (or load-file-name (buffer-file-name))))

;; org-setup
(add-to-list 'load-path (concat emacsd-dir "org/emacs/site-lisp/org"))
(require 'org)

;; Then tangle and load the file
(org-babel-load-file (expand-file-name "myconfig.org" emacsd-dir))
#+end_src

Here is a small snippet of the org file, to show you what it looks like:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
* Setting up
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(add-to-list 'load-path emacsd-dir)
(setq autoload-file (concat emacsd-dir "loaddefs.el"))
(setq package-user-dir (concat emacsd-dir "elpa"))
(setq custom-file (concat emacsd-dir "custom.el"))
#+END_SRC

** System name
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(if (eq system-type 'darwin)
    (setq system-name (car (split-string system-name "\\."))))
#+END_SRC

** Internationalization
Global environment
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  (setenv "LANG" "en_US.UTF-8")
#+END_SRC

To make sure dates are in English
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(setq system-time-locale "C")
#+END_SRC

* Hush
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  ;; Don't use messages that you don't read
  (setq initial-scratch-message "")
  (setq inhibit-startup-message t)
#+END_SRC

I'm also hiding the startup echo area message using this:
(customize-option 'inhibit-startup-echo-area-message)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Hope this helps,

Alan