Posts tagged "emacs":

Making Emacs without terminal emulator a little more usable

After reading Andrey Listopadov's You don't need a terminal emulator (mentioned at Irreal too) I decided to give up on using Emacs as a terminal for my shell. In my experience Emacs simply isn't a very good terminal to run a shell in anyway. I removed the almost completely unused shell-pop from my configuration and the keybinding with a binding to async-shell-command. I'm keeping terminal-here in my config for the time being though.

I realised projectile didn't have a function for running it in the root of a project, so I wrote one heavily based on project-async-shell-command.

(defun mep-projectile-async-shell-command ()
  "Run `async-shell-command' in the current project's root directory."
  (declare (interactive-only async-shell-command))
  (interactive)
  (let ((default-directory (projectile-project-root)))
    (call-interactively #'async-shell-command)))

I quickly found that the completion offered by Emacs for shell-command and async-shell-command is far from as sophisticated as what I'm used to from Z shell. After a bit of searching I found emacs-bash-completion. Bash isn't my shell of choice, partly because I've found the completion to not be as good as in Z shell, but it's an improvement over what stock Emacs offers. The instructions in the repo was good, but had to be adjusted slightly:

(use-package bash-completion
  :straight (:host github
             :repo "szermatt/emacs-bash-completion")
  :config
  (add-hook 'shell-dynamic-complete-functions 'bash-completion-dynamic-complete))

I just wish I'll find a package offering completions reaching Z shell levels.

Using the golang mode shipped with Emacs

A few weeks ago I wanted to try out tree-sitter and switched a few of the modes I use for coding to their -ts-mode variants. Based on the excellent How to Get Started with Tree-Sitter I added bits like this to the setup I have for coding modes:¹

(use-package X-mode
  :init
  (add-to-list 'treesit-language-source-alist '(X "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-X"))
  ;; (treesit-install-language-grammar 'X)
  (add-to-list 'major-mode-remap-alist '(X-mode . X-ts-mode))
  ;; ...
  )

I then manually evaluated the expression that's commented out to download and compile the tree-sitter grammar. It's a rather small change, it works, and I can switch over language by language. I swapped a couple of languages to the tree-sitter modes like this, including golang. The only mode that I noticed changes in was golang, in particular my adding of gofmt-before-save to before-save-hook had stopped having any effect.

What I hadn't realised was that the go-mode I was using didn't ship with Emacs and that when I switched to go-ts-mode I switched to one that was. It turns out that gofmt-before-save is hard-wired to work only in go-mode, something others have noticed.

I don't feel like waiting for go-mode to fix that though, especially not when there's a perfectly fine golang mode shipping with Emacs now, and not when emacs-reformatter make it so easy to define formatters (as I've written about before).

My golang setup, sans keybindings, now looks like this:²

(use-package go-ts-mode
  :hook
  (go-ts-mode . lsp-deferred)
  (go-ts-mode . go-format-on-save-mode)
  :init
  (add-to-list 'treesit-language-source-alist '(go "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-go"))
  (add-to-list 'treesit-language-source-alist '(gomod "https://github.com/camdencheek/tree-sitter-go-mod"))
  ;; (dolist (lang '(go gomod)) (treesit-install-language-grammar lang))
  (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.go\\'" . go-ts-mode))
  (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("/go\\.mod\\'" . go-mod-ts-mode))
  :config
  (reformatter-define go-format
    :program "goimports"
    :args '("/dev/stdin"))
  :general
  ;; ...
  )

So far I'm happy with the built-in go-ts-mode and I've got to say that using a minor mode for the format-on-save functionality is more elegant than adding a function to before-save-hook (something that go-mode may get through this PR).

How I use Emacs

I've recently written two posts about my attempts to use a slimmed down Emacs setup for some very specific use cases. I'be put both posts on Reddit, here and here, and in both cases the majority of comments have been telling me that I should use emacsclient. I know they have good intentions – they want to share insight they've gained and benefit from on a daily basis. However, no matter how many Emacs devotees point out the benefits of emacsclient I'm not about to start using it. This post is an attempt to answer why that is.

Up front I want to clarify a few things:

1. Yes, I know how to use emacsclient, and
2. yes, I know it is a good way to, in a way, improve Emacs startup time,¹ and
3. yes, I know how to turn on server-mode in Emacs, and finally
4. yes, I know how to run Emacs using a user unit for SystemD.

With that out of the way, here are the two ways I use Emacs

1. As my starting point for work, i.e. writing code, keeping notes, tracking time, and writing my daily work journal.
2. As my editor of ephemeral files.²

The next two sections explain more about these two distinct ways I use Emacs

Using Emacs as $EDITOR

Continuing on from my experiment with using Emacs as for scrollback in my terminal multiplexer I thought I'd try to use it as my $EDITOR as well.

The two main cases where I use $EDITOR is

1. The occasional use of git on the command line, rebasing or writing a commit message, and
2. Use of ZSH's edit-command-line functionality.

To make sure Emacs is starting up quickly enough I'm using the same small setup I created for the scrollback editing, so I'm now setting EDITOR like this

export EDITOR="emacs -nw --init-directory ~/.se.d"

Now that I want to use the same setup for editing I can't really jump into view-mode every time Emacs starts so I have to be a bit more clever. The following bit won't do

(add-hook 'find-file-hook #'view-mode)

I need to somehow find out what starts Emacs and then only modify the hook when needed. Unfortunately I haven't found anything that reveals that Emacs is started by zellij. Creating a separate little script that zellij uses would be an option, of course, but for now I've opted to make it the default and instead refrain from adding the hook in the other two use cases.

ZSH doesn't make it easy to find out that it's edit-command-line either, but as I've observed that the command line sometimes doesn't look right after leaving the editor I wanted to call redisplay to fix it up. That means I need to have a function anyway, so using an environment variable becomes an easy way to check if Emacs is being used to edit the command line.

function se-edit-command-line() {
    export SE_SKIP_VIEW=y
    zle edit-command-line
    unset SE_SKIP_VIEW
    zle redisplay
}
zle -N se-edit-command-line

bindkey -M vicmd '^V' se-edit-command-line
bindkey -M viins '^V' se-edit-command-line

Unfortunately is seems zle edit-command-line doesn't pass on non-exported environment variables, hence the explicit export and unset.

When git starts an editor it sets a few environment variables so it was easy to just pick one that is set in both cases I care about. I picked GIT_EXEC_PATH.

With these things in place I changed the slim setup to only add the hook when neither of the environment variables are present

(unless (or (getenv "SE_SKIP_VIEW")
            (getenv "GIT_EXEC_PATH"))
  (add-hook 'find-file-hook #'view-mode))

Hopefully this works out well enough that I won't feel a need to go back to using Neovim as my $EDITOR.

Defining a formatter for Cabal files

For Haskell code I can use lsp-format-buffer and lsp-format-region to keep my file looking nice, but I've never found a function for doing the same for Cabal files. There's a nice command line tool, cabal-fmt, for doing it, but it means having to jump to a terminal. It would of course be nicer to satisfy my needs for aesthetics directly from Emacs. A few times I've thought of writing the function myself, I mean how hard can it be? But then I've forgotten about it until then next time I'm editing a Cabal file.

A few days ago I noticed emacs-reformatter popping up in my feeds. That removed all reasons to procrastinate. It turned out to be very easy to set up.

The package doesn't have a recipe for straight.el so it needs a :straight section. Also, the naming of the file in the package doesn't fit the package name, hence the slightly different name in the use-package declaration:¹

(use-package reformatter
  :straight (:host github
             :repo "purcell/emacs-reformatter"))

Now the formatter can be defined

(reformatter-define cabal-format
  :program "cabal-fmt"
  :args '("/dev/stdin"))

in order to create functions for formatting, cabal-format-buffer and cabal-format-region, as well as a minor mode for formatting on saving a Cabal file.

Setting up emacs-openai/chatgpt

Yesterday I decided to try to make more use of the ChatGPT account I have. What prompted it mostly was that I recalled that my employer has a paid subscription and that if we use it enough they'll get us access to ChatGPT4.

After a bit of research¹ I decided to start with emacs-open/chatgpg. However, as I found the instructions slightly lacking I'm sharing my setup.

The instructions for straight.el fail to mention that one needs the openai package too.

(use-package openai
  :straight (openai :type git :host github :repo "emacs-openai/openai"))

The complete declaration for use-package ended up looking like this:

(use-package chatgpt
  :straight (chatgpt :type git :host github :repo "emacs-openai/chatgpt")
  :requires openai
  :config
  (setq openai-key #'openai-key-auth-source))

Oh, and don't forget to put an entry into `~/.authinfo.gpg`. Something like this should do it

machine api.openai.com login <anything> password <your key>

Using emacs for the scrollback in terminal multiplexers

I should start with saying that I still don't really know if this is a good idea or not, but it feels like it's worth trying out at least.

(defun se/yank-n-kill (beg end)
  (interactive "r")
  (evil-yank beg end)
  (kill-emacs))

Making keymaps prettier with general.el

After my previous post on defining keymaps using general.el I revisited some of my setup in order to make some package keymaps prettier when displayed by which-key. The keymaps defined by packages are typically don't contain any description of the bindings, so which-key ends up displaying the name of the function bound to the key. It's not always easy to remember what a function does based just on its name, and sometimes the names are so long that which-key cuts the name short and all you see is a bunch of keybindings for seemingly the same function.

The only remedy I've found is to re-define the keybindings decorating them with descriptions that (hopefully) are easier to understand than the function name. (At least, this way I only have myself to blame if it's a bad description.)

One such keymap that I use somewhat frequently, and where the function names often confuse me is evil-mc-key-map from evil-mc. The keymap is bound at g . in evil's normal and visual modes, and it also contains a few bindings using control (C-) and meta (M-) which I think would be better placed under sub-keymaps.

I decided to group the "make and go" functions under g . m and the "skip and go" function under g . s. The rest I'm just giving descriptions. general.el makes it easy both to overwrite already existing bindings, but adding descriptions, and to add new ones, all in one call to general-def:

(general-def evil-mc-key-map
  :states '(normal visual)
  "g.A" '("make end sel" . evil-mc-make-cursor-in-visual-selection-end)
  "g.I" '("make beg sel" . evil-mc-make-cursor-in-visual-selection-beg)
  "g.a" '("make all" . evil-mc-make-all-cursors)
  "g.q" '("undo all" . evil-mc-undo-all-cursors)
  "g.u" '("undo last" . evil-mc-undo-last-added-cursor)
  "g. RET" '("make here" . evil-mc-make-cursor-here)
  "g.p" '("pause" . evil-mc-pause-cursors)
  "g.r" '("resume" . evil-mc-resume-cursors)

  "g.m" '(:ignore t :wk "make & go")
  "g.m$" '("to last cur" . evil-mc-make-and-goto-last-cursor)
  "g.m0" '("to first cur" . evil-mc-make-and-goto-first-cursor)
  "g.mC" '("to prev cur" . evil-mc-make-and-goto-prev-cursor)
  "g.mc" '("to next cur" . evil-mc-make-and-goto-next-cursor)
  "g.mh" '("to prev match" . evil-mc-make-and-goto-prev-match)
  "g.mj" '("to next line" . evil-mc-make-cursor-move-next-line)
  "g.mk" '("to prev line" . evil-mc-make-cursor-move-prev-line)
  "g.ml" '("to next match" . evil-mc-make-and-goto-next-match)

  "g.s" '(:ignore t :wk "skip & go")
  "g.sC" '("to prev cur" . evil-mc-skip-and-goto-prev-cursor)
  "g.sc" '("to next cur" . evil-mc-skip-and-goto-next-cursor)
  "g.sh" '("to prev match" . evil-mc-skip-and-goto-prev-match)
  "g.sl" '("to next match" . evil-mc-skip-and-goto-next-match))

Finally I want to remove the bindings that weren't overwritten. general.el makes that easy too with general-undbind:

(general-unbind '(normal visual) evil-mc-key-map
  "g.$" "g.0"
  "g. C-n" "g. C-S-n"
  "g. C-u" "g. C-S-u"
  "g. C-p" "g. C-r"
  "g. M-N" "g. M-n"
  "g.N" "g.O" "g.n" "g.o")

Yes, this is a bit of work, and so far I've only done this for a few keymaps (those containing bindings I use frequently and/or find difficult to remember). So far I've found it worth the cost.

general.el and two ways to define keybindings

When I abandoned spacemacs I really wanted to duplicate its keybindings using SPC as leader key and per-mode bindings available by pressing ,. I found a nice setup using general.el in Tianshu Wang's Emacs config. I made only minor modification and ended up with the following setup.

(use-package general
  :after (evil evil-easymotion)
  :config
  (general-evil-setup)
  (general-auto-unbind-keys)

  (general-define-key
   :states '(normal insert motion visual emacs)
   :keymaps 'override
   :prefix-map 'tyrant-map
   :prefix "SPC"
   :non-normal-prefix "M-SPC")
  (general-create-definer mes/tyrant-def :keymaps 'tyrant-map)
  (mes/tyrant-def "" nil)

  (general-create-definer mes/despot-def
    :states '(normal insert motion visual emacs)
    :keymaps 'override
    :major-modes t
    :prefix ","
    :non-normal-prefix "M-,")
  (mes/despot-def "" nil)

  (general-def universal-argument-map
    "SPC u" 'universal-argument-more))

One slightly surprising thing I found out is that two different ways to define keybindings can be used, one seems to work on both top and mode level, the other only on mode level.

(mes/tyrant-def
  "SPC" '("M-x" . execute-extended-command)
  "TAB" '("latest buffer" . mode-line-other-buffer)
  "!" 'shell-command
  "/" '("search" . consult-ripgrep)
  "u" 'universal-argument

  "b" (cons "bufs" (make-sparse-keymap))
  "bb" '("switch" . consult-buffer)
  "bc" '("close" . kill-this-buffer)
  "be" '("erase" . erase-buffer)
  "bs" '("scratch" . scratch-buffer)

  ;; ....
  )

(mes/despot-def nix-mode-map
  "=" '(:ignore t :wk "format")
  "=b" '(nix-format-buffer :wk "buffer"))

More on tree-sitter and consult

Here's a few things that I've gotten help with figuring out during the last few days. Both things are related to my playing with tree-sitter that I've written about earlier, here and here.

You might also be interested in the two repositories where the full code is. (I've linked to the specific commits as of this writing.)

• My Cabal mode
• tree-sitter-cabal

sections: $ => repeat1(choice(
    $.benchmark,
    $.common,
    $.executable,
    $.flag,
    $.library,
    $.source_repository,
    $.test_suite,
)),

benchmark: $ => seq(
    repeat($.comment),
    'benchmark',
    field('name', $.section_name),
    field('properties', $.property_block),
),

(cabal
 (sections
  (_ _ @type
     name: (section_name)? @name)))

benchmark: $ => seq(
    repeat($.comment),
    field('type', 'benchmark'),
    field('name', $.section_name),
    field('properties', $.property_block),
),

(cabal
 (sections
  (_ ["benchmark" "common" "executable" ...] @type
     name: (section_name)? @name)))

benchmark: $ => seq(
    repeat($.comment),
    field('type', alias('benchmark', $.section_type)),
    field('name', $.section_name),
    field('properties', $.property_block),
),

(cabal
 (sections
  (_
   type: (section_type) @type
   name: (section_name)? @name)))

(defun consult-cabal--state ()
  "Create a state function for previewing sections."
  (let ((state (consult--jump-state)))
    (lambda (action cand)
      (when cand
        (let ((pos (get-text-property 0 'section-pos cand)))
          (funcall state action pos))))))

Cabal, tree-sitter, and consult

After my last post I thought I'd move on to implement the rest of the functions in haskell-mode's major mode for Cabal, functions like haskell-cabal-goto-library-section and haskell-cabal-goto-executable-section. Then I realised that what I really want is a way to quickly jump to any section, that is, I want consult-cabal!

What follows is very much a work-in-progress, but hopefully it'll show enough promise.

(cabal
 ...
 (properties ...)
 (sections
  (common common (section_name) ...)
  (library library ...)
  (executable executable (section_name) ...)
  ...))

"(cabal (sections (_)* @section))"

(treesit-query-capture (treesit-buffer-root-node 'cabal)
                       "(cabal (sections (_)* @section))"
                       nil nil t)

(defvar consult-cabal--source-section
  `(:name "Sections"
    :category location
    :action ,#'consult-cabal--section-action
    :items ,#'consult-cabal--section-items)
  "Definition of source for Cabal sections.")

(defun consult-cabal--section-to-string (section)
  "Convert a single SECTION node to a string."
  (propertize (format "%S" section)
              :treesit-node section))

(defun consult-cabal--section-items ()
  "Fetch all sections as a list of strings ."
  (let ((section-nodes (treesit-query-capture (treesit-buffer-root-node 'cabal)
                                              "(cabal (sections (_)* @section))"
                                              nil nil t)))
    (mapcar #'consult-cabal--section-to-string section-nodes)))

(defun consult-cabal--section-action (item)
  "Go to the section referenced by ITEM."
  (when-let* ((node (get-text-property 0 :treesit-node item))
              (new-pos (treesit-node-start node)))
    (goto-char new-pos)))

(defun consult-cabal ()
  "Choose a Cabal construct and jump to it."
  (interactive)
  (consult--multi '(consult-cabal--source-section)
                  :sort nil))

Making an Emacs major mode for Cabal using tree-sitter

A few days ago I posted on r/haskell that I'm attempting to put together a Cabal grammar for tree-sitter. Some things are still missing, but it covers enough to start doing what I initially intended: experiment with writing an alternative Emacs major mode for Cabal.

The documentation for the tree-sitter integration is very nice, and several of the major modes already have tree-sitter variants, called X-ts-mode where X is e.g. python, so putting together the beginning of a major mode wasn't too much work.

(use-package treesit
  :straight nil
  :ensure nil
  :commands (treesit-install-language-grammar)
  :init
  (setq treesit-language-source-alist
        '((cabal . ("https://gitlab.com/magus/tree-sitter-cabal.git")))))

(use-package my-cabal-mode
  :straight (:type git
             :repo "git@gitlab.com:magus/my-emacs-pkgs.git"
             :branch "main"
             :files (:defaults "my-cabal-mode/*el")))

(defvar cabal--treesit-font-lock-setting
  (treesit-font-lock-rules
   :feature 'comment
   :language 'cabal
   '((comment) @font-lock-comment-face)

   :feature 'cabal-version
   :language 'cabal
   '((cabal_version _) @font-lock-constant-face)

   :feature 'field-name
   :language 'cabal
   '((field_name) @font-lock-keyword-face)

   :feature 'section-name
   :language 'cabal
   '((section_name) @font-lock-variable-name-face))
  "Tree-sitter font-lock settings.")

;;;###autoload
(define-derived-mode my-cabal-mode fundamental-mode "My Cabal"
  "My mode for Cabal files"

  (when (treesit-ready-p 'cabal)
    (treesit-parser-create 'cabal)
    ;; set up treesit
    (setq-local treesit-font-lock-feature-list
                '((comment field-name section-name)
                  (cabal-version)
                  () ()))
    (setq-local treesit-font-lock-settings cabal--treesit-font-lock-setting)
    (treesit-major-mode-setup)))

;;;###autoload
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.cabal\\'" . my-cabal-mode))

(defun cabal--node-is-section-p (n)
  "Predicate to check if treesit node N is a Cabal section."
  (member (treesit-node-type n)
          '("benchmark" "common" "executable" "flag" "library" "test_suite")))

(defun cabal-goto-beginning-of-section ()
  "Go to the beginning of the current section."
  (interactive)
  (when-let* ((node-at-point (treesit-node-at (point)))
              (section-node (treesit-parent-until node-at-point #'cabal--node-is-section-p))
              (start-pos (treesit-node-start section-node)))
    (goto-char start-pos)))

(defun cabal-goto-end-of-section ()
  "Go to the end of the current section."
  (interactive)
  (when-let* ((node-at-point (treesit-node-at (point)))
              (section-node (treesit-parent-until node-at-point #'cabal--node-is-section-p))
              (end-pos (treesit-node-end section-node)))
    (goto-char end-pos)))

Per-project xref history in Emacs

When I write code I jump around in the code quite a bit, as I'm sure many other developers do. The ability to jump to the definition of a function, or a type, is invaluable when trying to understand code. In Emacs the built-in xref package provides the basic functionality for this, with many other packages providing their custom functions for looking up identifiers. This works beautifully except for one thing, there's only one global stack for keeping track of how you've jumped around.

Well, that used to be the case.

As I tend to have multiple projects open at a time I used to find it very confusing when I pop positions off the xref stack and all of a sudden find myself in another project. It would be so much nicer to have a per-project stack.

I've only known of one solution for this, the perspective package, but as I've been building my own Emacs config I wanted to see if there were other options. It turns out there is one (almost) built into Emacs 29.

In Emacs 29 there's built-in support for having per-window xref stacks, and the way that's done allows one to extend it further. There's now a variable, xref-history-storage, that controls access to the xref stack. The default is still a global stack (when the variable is set to #'xref-global-history), but to get per-window stacks one sets it to #'xref-window-local-history.

After finding this out I thought I'd try to write my own, implementing per-project xref stacks (for projectile).

The function should take one optional argument, new-value, if it's provided the stack should be updated and if not, it should be returned. That is, something like this

(defun projectile-param-xref-history (&optional new-value)
  "Return project-local xref history for the current projectile.

Override existing value with NEW-VALUE if it's set."
  (if new-value
      (projectile-param-set-parameter 'xref--history new-value)
    (or (projectile-param-get-parameter 'xref--history)
        (projectile-param-set-parameter 'xref--history (xref--make-xref-history)))))

Now I only had to write the two functions projectile-param-get-parameter and projectile-param-set-parameter. I thought a rather straight forward option would be to use a hashtable and store values under a tuple comprising the project name and the parameter passed in.

(defvar projectile-params--store (make-hash-table :test 'equal)
  "The store of project parameters.")

(defun projectile-param-get-parameter (param)
  "Return project parameter PARAM, or nil if unset."
  (let ((key (cons (projectile-project-name) param)))
    (gethash key projectile-params--store nil)))

(defun projectile-param-set-parameter (param value)
  "Set the project parameter PARAM to VALUE."
  (let ((key (cons (projectile-project-name) param)))
    (puthash key value projectile-params--store))
  value)

Then I tried it out by setting xref-history-storage

(setq xref-history-storage #'projectile-param-xref-history)

and so far it's been working well.

The full code is here.

Annotate projects in Emacs

Every now and then I've wished to write comments on files in a project, but I've never found a good way to do that. annotate.el and org-annotate-file both collect annotations in a central place (in my $HOME), while marginalia puts annotations in files next to the source files but in a format that's rather cryptic and tends to be messed up when attached to multiple lines. None of them is ideal, I'd like the format to be org-mode, but not in a central file. At the same time having one annotation file per source file is simply too much.

I tried wrapping org-annotate-file, setting org-annotate-file-storage-file and taking advantage of elisp's dynamic binding. However, it opens the annotation file in the current window, and I'd really like to split the window and open the annotations the right. Rather than trying to sort of "work it out backwards" I decided to write a small package and use as much of the functionality in org-annotate-file.el as possible.

First off I decided that I want the annotation file to be called projectile-annotations.org.

(defvar org-projectile-annotate-file-name "projectile-annotations.org"
  "The name of the file to store project annotations.")

Then I wanted a slightly modified version of org-annotate-file-show-section, I wanted it to respect the root of the project.

(defun org-projectile-annotate--file-show-section (storage-file)
  "Add or show annotation entry in STORAGE-FILE and return the buffer."
  ;; modified version of org-annotate-file-show-section
  (let* ((proj-root (projectile-project-root))
         (filename (file-relative-name buffer-file-name proj-root))
         (line (buffer-substring-no-properties (point-at-bol) (point-at-eol)))
         (annotation-buffer (find-file-noselect storage-file)))
    (with-current-buffer annotation-buffer
      (org-annotate-file-annotate filename line))
    annotation-buffer))

The main function can then simply work out where the file with annotations should be located and call org-projectile-annotate--file-show-section.

(defun org-projectile-annotate ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((annot-fn (file-name-concat (projectile-project-root)
                                    org-projectile-annotate-file-name)))
    (set-window-buffer (split-window-right)
                       (org-projectile-annotate--file-show-section annot-fn))))

When testing it all out I noticed that org-store-link makes a link with a search text. In my case it would be much better to have links with line numbers. I found there's a hook to modify the behaviour of org-store-link, org-create-file-search-functions. So I wrote a function to get the kind of links I want, but only when the project annotation file is open in a buffer.

(defun org-projectile-annotate-file-search-func ()
  "A function returning the current line number when called in a
project while the project annotation file is open.

This function is designed for use in the hook
'org-create-file-search-functions'. It changes the behaviour of
'org-store-link' so it constructs a link with a line number
instead of a search string."
  ;; TODO: find a way to make the link description nicer
  (when (and (projectile-project-p)
             (get-buffer-window org-projectile-annotate-file-name))
    (number-to-string (line-number-at-pos))))

That's it, now I only have to wait until the next time I want to comment on a project to see if it improves my way of working.

Playing with setting up Emacs

TL;DR: I've put together a small-ish Emacs configuration that I call MES. Hopefully it can be of use to someone out there.

Power-mode in Spacemacs

I just found the Power Mode for Emacs. If you want to try it out in Spacemacs you can make sure that your ~/.spacemacs contains the following

dotspacemacs-additional-packages
'(
  ...
  (power-mode :location (recipe
                         :fetcher github
                         :repo "elizagamedev/power-mode.el"))
  )

After a restart Power Mode can be turned on using SPC SPC power-mode.

Unfortunately I found that it slows down rendering so badly that Emacs isn't keeping up with my typing. Even though I removed it right away again it was fun to try it out, and I did learn how to add package to Spacemacs that aren't on MELPA.

A useful resource is this reference on the recipe format.

Comments and org-static-blog

I'm using org-static-blog to generate the contents of this site. So far I'm very happy with it, but I've gotten a few emails from readers who've wanted to comment on something I've written and they always point out that it's not easy to do. It's actually not a coincidence that it's a bit difficult!

Yesterday I came up with a way that might make is slightly easier without involving JavaScript from a 3rd party. By making use of the built-in support for adding HTML code for comments. One slight limitation is that it's a single variable holding the code, and I'd really like to allow for both

• using a link to a discussion site, e.g. reddit, as well as
• my email address

As the comment support in org-static-blog comes in the form of a single variable this seems a bit difficult to accomplish. However, it isn't difficult at all to do in elisp due to the power of advice-add.

By using the following advice on org-static-blog-publish-file

(advice-add 'org-static-blog-publish-file :around
            (lambda (orig-fn filename &rest args)
              (let*  ((comments-url (with-temp-buffer
                                      (insert-file-contents filename)
                                      (or (cadar (org-collect-keywords '("commentsurl")))
                                          my-blog-default-comments-url)))
                      (org-static-blog-post-comments (concat "Comment <a href=" comments-url ">here</a>.")))
                (apply orig-fn filename args))))

and defining my-blog-default-comments-url to a mailto:... URL I get a link to use for commenting by either

1. set commentsurl to point to discussion about the post on reddit, or
2. not set commentsurl at all and get the mailto:... URL.

If you look at my previous post you see the result of the former, and if you look below you see the result of the latter.

Keeping Projectile's cache tidy

A while back I added a function to find all projects recursively from a directory and add them to Projectile's cache (see the Populating Projectile's cache). Since then I've just made a tiny change to also include containing a .projectile file.

(defun projectile-extra-add-projects-in-subfolders (projects-root)
  (interactive (list (read-directory-name "Add to known projects: ")))
  (message "Searching for projects in %s..." projects-root)
  (let* ((proj-rx (rx (and line-start ?. (or "projectile" "git") line-end)))
         (dirs (seq-map
                'file-name-directory
                (directory-files-recursively projects-root
                                             proj-rx
                                             t))))
    (seq-do 'projectile-add-known-project dirs)
    (message "Added %d projects" (length dirs))))

Since then I've also found a need for tidying the cache, in my casse that means removing entries in the cache that no longer exist on disk. I didn't find a function for it, so I wrote one.

(defun projectile-extra-tidy-projects ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((missing-dirs (seq-remove 'file-directory-p projectile-known-projects)))
    (seq-do 'projectile-remove-known-project missing-dirs)
    (message "Tidied %d projects" (length missing-dirs))))

Trimming newline on code block variable

Today I found ob-http and decided to try it out a little. I quickly ran into a problem of a trailing newline. Basically I tried to do something like this:

#+name: id
#+begin_src http :select .id :cache yes
POST /foo
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "foo": "toto",
  "bar": "tata"
}
#+end_src

#+RESULTS[c5fd99206822a2109d7ac1d140185e6ec3f4f1d9]: id
#+begin_example
48722051-f81b-433f-acb4-a65d961ec841
#+end_example

#+header: :var id=id
#+begin_src http
POST /foo/${id}/fix
#+end_src

The trailing newline messes up the URL though, and the second code block fails.

I found two ways to deal with it, using a table and using org-sbe

#+name: id
#+begin_src http :select .id :cache yes :results table
POST /foo
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "foo": "toto",
  "bar": "tata"
}
#+end_src

#+RESULTS[c5fd99206822a2109d7ac1d140185e6ec3f4f1d9]: id
#+begin_example
| 48722051-f81b-433f-acb4-a65d961ec841 |
#+end_example

#+header: :var id=id[0,0]
#+begin_src http
POST /foo/${id}/fix
#+end_src

#+name: id
#+begin_src http :select .id :cache yes
POST /foo
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "foo": "toto",
  "bar": "tata"
}
#+end_src

#+RESULTS[c5fd99206822a2109d7ac1d140185e6ec3f4f1d9]: id
#+begin_example
48722051-f81b-433f-acb4-a65d961ec841
#+end_example

#+header: :var id=(org-sbe id)
#+begin_src http
POST /foo/${id}/fix
#+end_src

Magit/forge and self-hosted GitLab

As I found the documentation for adding a self-hosted instance of GitLab to to magit/forge a bit difficult, I thought I'd write a note for my future self (and anyone else who might find it useful).

First put the following in `~/.gitconfig`

[gitlab "gitlab.private.com/api/v4"]
  user = my.username

Then create an access token on GitLab. I ticked api and write_repository, which seems to work fine so far. Put the token in ~/.authinfo.gpg

machine gitlab.private.com/api/v4 login my.user^forge password <token>

(Remember that a newline is needed at the end of the file.)

Finally, add the GitLab instance to 'forge-alist

(setq
 forge-alist
 '(("gitlab.private.com" "gitlab.private.com/api/v4" "gitlab.private.com" forge-gitlab-repository)
   ("github.com" "api.github.com" "github.com" forge-github-repository)
   ("gitlab.com" "gitlab.com/api/v4" "gitlab.com" forge-gitlab-repository))
 )

That's it!

Keeping todo items in org-roam v2

Org-roam v2 has been released and yes, it broke my config a bit. Unfortunately the v1-to-v2 upgrade wizard didn't work for me. I realized later that it might have been due to the roam-related functions I'd hooked into `'before-save-hook`. I didn't think about it until I'd already manually touched up almost all my files (there aren't that many) so I can't say anything for sure. However, I think it might be a good idea to keep hooks in mind if one runs into issues with upgrading.

The majority of the time I didn't spend on my notes though, but on the setup I've written about in an earlier post, Keeping todo items in org-roam. Due to some of the changes in v2, changes that I think make org-roam slightly more "org-y", that setup needed a bit of love.

The basis is still the same 4 functions I described in that post, only the details had to be changed.

I hope the following is useful, and as always I'm always happy to receive commends and suggestions for improvements.

(defun roam-extra:get-filetags ()
  (split-string (or (org-roam-get-keyword "filetags") "")))

(defun roam-extra:add-filetag (tag)
  (let* ((new-tags (cons tag (roam-extra:get-filetags)))
         (new-tags-str (combine-and-quote-strings new-tags)))
    (org-roam-set-keyword "filetags" new-tags-str)))

(defun roam-extra:del-filetag (tag)
  (let* ((new-tags (seq-difference (roam-extra:get-filetags) `(,tag)))
         (new-tags-str (combine-and-quote-strings new-tags)))
    (org-roam-set-keyword "filetags" new-tags-str)))

(defun roam-extra:todo-p ()
  "Return non-nil if current buffer has any TODO entry.

TODO entries marked as done are ignored, meaning the this
function returns nil if current buffer contains only completed
tasks."
  (org-element-map
      (org-element-parse-buffer 'headline)
      'headline
    (lambda (h)
      (eq (org-element-property :todo-type h)
          'todo))
    nil 'first-match))

(defun roam-extra:update-todo-tag ()
  "Update TODO tag in the current buffer."
  (when (and (not (active-minibuffer-window))
             (org-roam-file-p))
    (org-with-point-at 1
      (let* ((tags (roam-extra:get-filetags))
             (is-todo (roam-extra:todo-p)))
        (cond ((and is-todo (not (seq-contains-p tags "todo")))
               (roam-extra:add-filetag "todo"))
              ((and (not is-todo) (seq-contains-p tags "todo"))
               (roam-extra:del-filetag "todo")))))))

(defun roam-extra:todo-files ()
  "Return a list of roam files containing todo tag."
  (org-roam-db-sync)
  (let ((todo-nodes (seq-filter (lambda (n)
                                  (seq-contains-p (org-roam-node-tags n) "todo"))
                                 (org-roam-node-list))))
    (seq-uniq (seq-map #'org-roam-node-file todo-nodes))))

(defun roam-extra:update-todo-files (&rest _)
  "Update the value of `org-agenda-files'."
  (setq org-agenda-files (roam-extra:todo-files)))

(add-hook 'find-file-hook #'roam-extra:update-todo-tag)
(add-hook 'before-save-hook #'roam-extra:update-todo-tag)
(advice-add 'org-agenda :before #'roam-extra:update-todo-files)

Todo items in org-roam, an update

I got an email from Mr Z with a nice modification to the code in my post on keeping todo items in org-roam.

He already had a bunch of agenda files that he wanted to keep using (I had so few of them that I'd simply converted them to roam files). Here's the solution he shared with me:

(defvar roam-extra-original-org-agenda-files nil
  "Original value of  `org-agenda-files'.")

(defun roam-extra:update-todo-files (&rest _)
  "Update the value of `org-agenda-files'."
  (unless roam-extra-original-org-agenda-files
    (setq roam-extra-original-org-agenda-files org-agenda-files))
  (setq org-agenda-files
        (append roam-extra-original-org-agenda-files
                (roam-extra:todo-files))))

It's a rather nice modification I think. Thanks to Mr Z for agreeing to let me share it here.

Keeping todo items in org-roam

A while ago I made an attempt to improve my work habits by keeping a document with TODO items. It lasted only for a while, and I've since had the intention to make another attempt. Since then I've started using org-roam and I've managed to create a habit of writing daily journal notes using org-roam's daily-notes. A few times I've thought that it might fit me well to put TODO items in the notes, but that would mean that I'd have to somehow keep track of them. At first I manually added a tag to each journal fily containing a TODO item. That didn't work very well at all, which should have been obvious up front. Then I added the folders where I keep roam files and journals to org-agenda-files, that worked a lot better. I'd still be using that, even if I expected it to slow down considerably as the number of files grow, but then I found a post on dynamic and fast agenda with org-roam.

I adjusted it slightly to fit my own setup a bit better, i.e. I made a Spacemacs layer, roam-extra, I use the tag todo, and I use a different hook to get the tag added on opening an org-roam file.

The layer consists of a single file, layers/roam-extra/funcs.el. In it I define 4 functions (they are pretty much copies of the functions in the post linked above):

1. roam-extra:todo-p - returns non-nil if the current current buffer contains a TODO item.
2. roam-extra:update-todo-tag - updates the tags of the current buffer to reflect the presence of TODO items, i.e. ensure the the tag todo is present iff there's a TODO item.
3. roam-extra:todo-files - uses the org-roam DB to return a list of all files containing the tag todo.
4. roam-extra:update-todo-files - adjusts 'org-agenda-files to contain only the files with TODO items.

I've put the full contents of the file at the end of the post.

To ensure that the todo tag is correct in all org-mode files I've added roam-extra:update-todo-tag to hooks that are invoked on opening an org-ram file and when saving a file. (I would love to find a more specialise hook than before-save-hook, but it works for now.)

(add-hook 'org-roam-file-setup-hook #'roam-extra:update-todo-tag)
(add-hook 'before-save-hook #'roam-extra:update-todo-tag)

To ensure that the list of files with TODO items is kept up to date when I open I also wrap org-agenda in an advice so roam-extra:update-todo-files is called prior to the agenda being opened.

(advice-add 'org-agenda :before #'roam-extra:update-todo-files)

(defun roam-extra:todo-p ()
  "Return non-nil if current buffer has any TODO entry.

TODO entries marked as done are ignored, meaning the this
function returns nil if current buffer contains only completed
tasks."
  (org-element-map
      (org-element-parse-buffer 'headline)
      'headline
    (lambda (h)
      (eq (org-element-property :todo-type h)
          'todo))
    nil 'first-match))

(defun roam-extra:update-todo-tag ()
  "Update TODO tag in the current buffer."
  (when (and (not (active-minibuffer-window))
             (org-roam--org-file-p buffer-file-name))
    (let* ((file (buffer-file-name (buffer-base-buffer)))
           (all-tags (org-roam--extract-tags file))
           (prop-tags (org-roam--extract-tags-prop file))
           (tags prop-tags))
      (if (roam-extra:todo-p)
          (setq tags (seq-uniq (cons "todo" tags)))
        (setq tags (remove "todo" tags)))
      (unless (equal prop-tags tags)
        (org-roam--set-global-prop
         "roam_tags"
         (combine-and-quote-strings tags))))))

(defun roam-extra:todo-files ()
  "Return a list of note files containing todo tag."
  (seq-map
   #'car
   (org-roam-db-query
    [:select file
             :from tags
             :where (like tags (quote "%\"todo\"%"))])))

(defun roam-extra:update-todo-files (&rest _)
  "Update the value of `org-agenda-files'."
  (setq org-agenda-files (roam-extra:todo-files)))

Flycheck and HLS

I've been using LSP for most programming languages for a while now. HLS is really very good now, but I've found that it doesn't warn on quite all things I'd like it to so I find myself having to swap between the 'lsp and 'haskell-ghc checkers. However, since flycheck supports chaining checkers I thought there must be a way to have both checkers active at the same time.

The naive approach didn't work due to load order of things in Spacemacs so I had to experiment a bit to find something that works.

The first issue was to make sure that HLS is available at all. I use shell.nix together with direnv extensively and I had noticed that lsp-mode tried to load HLS before direnv had put it in the $PATH. I think the 'lsp-beforeinitialize-hook is the hook to use for this:

(add-hook 'lsp-before-initialize-hook #'direnv-update-environment))

I made a several attempt to chain the checkers but kept on getting errors due to the 'lsp checker not being defined yet. Another problem I ran into was that the checkers were chained too late, resulting in having to manually run flycheck-buffer on the first file I opened. (Deferred loading is a brilliant thing, but make some things really difficult to debug.) After quite a bit of experimenting and reading the description of various hooks I did find something that works:

(with-eval-after-load 'lsp-mode
  (defun magthe:lsp-next-checker ()
    (flycheck-add-next-checker 'lsp '(warning . haskell-ghc)))
  (add-hook 'lsp-lsp-haskell-after-open-hook
            #'magthe:lsp-next-checker))

Of course I have no idea if this is the easiest or most elegant solution but it does work for my testcases:

1. Open a file in a project, SPC p l - choose project - choose a Haskell file.
2. Open a project, SPC p l followed by C-d, and then open a Haskell file.

Suggestions for improvements are more than welcome, of course.

Better Nix setup for Spacemacs

In an earlier post I documented my setup for getting Spacemacs/Emacs to work with Nix. I've since found a much more elegant solution based on

• direnv, and
• emacs-direnv

No more Emacs packages for Nix and no need to defining functions that wrap executables in an invocation of nix-shell.

There's a nice bonus too, with this setup I don't need to run nix-shell, which always drops me at a bash prompt, instead I get a working setup in my shell of choice.

(defconst direnv-packages
      '(direnv))

(defun direnv/init-direnv ()
  (use-package direnv
    :init
    (direnv-mode)))

use_nix

IN_NIX_SHELL= nix-build

Nix setup for Spacemacs

Edit 2020-06-22: I've since found a better setup for this.

When using ghcide and LSP, as I wrote about in my post on Haskell, ghcide, and Spacemacs, I found myself ending up recompiling a little too often. This pushed me to finally start looking at Nix. After a bit of a fight I managed to get ghcide from Nix, which brought me the issue of setting up Spacemacs. Inspired by a gist from Samuel Evans-Powell and a guide to setting up an environment for Reflex by Thales Macedo Garitezi I ended up with the following setup:

(defun dotspacemacs/layers ()
  (setq-default
   ...
   dotspacemacs-additional-packages
   '(
     nix-sandbox
     nix-haskell-mode
     ...
     )
   ...
   ))

(defun dotspacemacs/user-config ()
  ...
  (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook #'lsp)
  (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook 'nix-haskell-mode)
  (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook
            (lambda ()
              (setq-local flycheck-executable-find
                          (lambda (cmd)
                            (nix-executable-find (nix-current-sandbox) cmd)))
              (setq-local flycheck-command-wrapper-function
                          (lambda (argv)
                            (apply 'nix-shell-command (nix-current-sandbox) argv)))
              (setq-local haskell-process-wrapper-function
                          (lambda (argv)
                            (apply 'nix-shell-command (nix-current-sandbox) argv)))
              (setq-local lsp-haskell-process-wrapper-function
                          (lambda (argv)
                            `("nix-shell" "-I" "." "--command" "ghcide --lsp" ,(nix-current-sandbox))))))
  (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook
            (lambda ()
              (flycheck-add-next-checker 'lsp-ui '(warning . haskell-stack-ghc))))
  ...
  )

It seems to work, but please let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.

Populating Projectile's cache

As I track the develop branch of Spacemacs I occasionally clean out my cache of projects known to Projectile. Every time it takes a while before I'm back at a stage where I very rarely have to visit something that isn't already in the cache.

However, today I found the function projectile-add-known-project, which prompted me to write the following function that'll help me quickly re-building the cache the next time I need to reset Spacemacs to a known state again.

(defun projectile-extra-add-projects-in-subfolders (projects-root)
  (interactive (list (read-directory-name "Add to known projects: ")))
  (message "Searching for projects in %s..." projects-root)
  (let ((dirs (seq-map 'file-name-directory (directory-files-recursively projects-root "^.git$" t))))
    (seq-do 'projectile-add-known-project dirs)
    (message "Added %d projects" (length dirs))))

Ditaa in Org mode

Just found out that Emacs ships with Babel support for ditaa (yes, I'm late to the party).

Sweet! That is yet another argument for converting all our README.md into README.org at work.

\

The changes I made to my Spacemacs config are

(defun dotspacemacs/user-config ()
  ...
  (with-eval-after-load 'org
    ...
    (add-to-list 'org-babel-load-languages '(ditaa . t))
    (setq org-ditaa-jar-path "/usr/share/java/ditaa/ditaa-0.11.jar"))
  ...)

Haskell, ghcide, and Spacemacs

The other day I read Chris Penner's post on Haskell IDE Support and thought I'd make an attempt to use it with Spacemacs.

After running stack build hie-bios ghcide haskell-lsp --copy-compiler-tool I had a look at the instructions on using haskell-ide-engine with Spacemacs. After a bit of trial and error I came up with these changes to my ~/.spacemacs:

(defun dotspacemacs/layers ()
  (setq-default
   dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
   '(
    ...
    lsp
    (haskell :variables
             haskell-completion-backend 'lsp
             )
    ...)
  )
)

(defun dotspacemacs/user-config ()
  (setq lsp-haskell-process-args-hie '("exec" "ghcide" "--" "--lsp")
        lsp-haskell-process-path-hie "stack"
        lsp-haskell-process-wrapper-function (lambda (argv) (cons (car argv) (cddr argv)))
        )
  (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook
            #'lsp))

The slightly weird looking lsp-haskell-process-wrapper-function is removing the pesky --lsp inserted by this line.

That seems to work. Though I have to say I'm not ready to switch from intero just yet. Two things in particular didn't work with =ghcide=/LSP:

1. Switching from one the Main.hs in one executable to the Main.hs of another executable in the same project didn't work as expected – I had hints and types in the first, but nothing in the second.
2. Jump to the definition of a function defined in the package didn't work – I'm not willing to use GNU GLOBAL or some other source tagging system.

Some OrgMode stuff

The last few days I've watched Rainer König's OrgMode videos. It's resulted in a few new settings that makes Org a little more useful.

TIL: prompt matters to org-mode

A workmate just embellished some shell code blocks I'd put in a shared org-mode file with :session s. When I tried to run the blocks with sessions my emacs just froze up though. I found a post on the emacs StackExchange that offered a possible cause for it: the prompt.

I'm using bash-it so my prompt is rather far from the default.

After inspecting the session buffer simply added the following to my ~/.bashrc

if [[ ${TERM} == "dumb" ]]; then
    export BASH_IT_THEME='standard'
else
    export BASH_IT_THEME='simple'
fi

and now I can finally run shell code blocks in sessions.

A missing piece in my Emacs/Spacemacs setup for Haskell development

With the help of a work mate I've finally found this gem that's been missing from my Spacemacs setup

(with-eval-after-load 'intero
  (flycheck-add-next-checker 'intero '(warning . haskell-hlint))
  (flycheck-add-next-checker 'intero '(warning . haskell-stack-ghc)))

QuickCheck on a REST API

Since I'm working with web stuff nowadays I thought I'd play a little with translating my old post on using QuickCheck to test C APIs to the web.

data ApiCall = AddUser Text
             | DeleteUser Int
             | EndProgram
             deriving (Show)

newtype Program = Prog [ApiCall]

type Model = M.Map Int Text

simulateProgram :: Program -> Model
simulateProgram (Prog cs) = foldl simulateCall M.empty cs

simulateCall :: Model -> ApiCall -> Model
simulateCall m (AddUser t) = M.insert k t m
  where
    k = succ $ foldl max 0 (M.keys m)
simulateCall m (DeleteUser k) = M.delete k m
simulateCall m EndProgram = m

runCall :: Manager -> ApiCall -> IO ()
runCall mgr (AddUser t) = do
  ireq <- parseRequest "POST http://localhost:3000/users"
  let req = ireq { requestBody = RequestBodyLBS (encode $ User 0 t)}
  resp <- httpLbs req mgr
  guard (status201 == responseStatus resp)

runCall mgr (DeleteUser k) = do
  req <- parseRequest $ "DELETE http://localhost:3000/users/" ++ show k
  resp <- httpNoBody req mgr
  guard (status200 == responseStatus resp)

runCall _ EndProgram = return ()

runProgram :: Program -> IO Model
runProgram (Prog cs) = do
  mgr <- newManager defaultManagerSettings
  resetReq <- parseRequest "POST http://localhost:3000/reset"
  httpNoBody resetReq mgr
  mapM_ (runCall mgr) cs
  model <- extractModel mgr
  return model

extractModel :: Manager -> IO Model
extractModel mgr = do
  req <- parseRequest "http://localhost:3000/users"
  resp <- httpLbs req mgr
  let (Just ids) = decode (responseBody resp) :: Maybe [Int]
  users <- forM ids $ \ id -> do
    req <- parseRequest $ "http://localhost:3000/users/" ++ show id
    resp <- httpLbs req mgr
    let (Just (user:_)) = decode (responseBody resp) :: Maybe [User]
    return user
  return $ foldl (\ map (User id name) -> M.insert id name map) M.empty users

genProgram :: Gen Program
genProgram = Prog <$> go M.empty
  where
    possibleAddUser _ = [AddUser <$> arbitrary]
    possibleDeleteUser m = map (return . DeleteUser) (M.keys m)
    possibleEndProgram _ = [return EndProgram]

    go m = do
      let possibles = possibleDeleteUser m ++ possibleAddUser m ++ possibleEndProgram m
      s <- oneof possibles
      let m' = simulateCall m s
      case s of
        EndProgram -> return []
        _ -> (s:) <$> go m'

instance Arbitrary Program where
  arbitrary = genProgram
  shrink p = []

prop_progCorrectness :: Program -> Property
prop_progCorrectness program = monadicIO $ do
  let simulatedModel = simulateProgram program
  runModel <- run $ runProgram program
  assert $ simulatedModel == runModel