Declaring .emacs Bankruptcy

Well really this is a post bankruptcy posting!

What? Cleanup .emacs file impossible you say. It must gather sediment like sandstone until you have a tremendous hard packed conglomeration of ideas, never daring to change something unless it breaks and not knowing if it worked in the first place.

The Motivation: Messy configuration file, no organisation, unused configuration/modes.

The Solution: Remembering a link I archived in delicious some time ago, I revisited their ideas.

What I got was a very short .emacs file that only has some Load Path additions and a heap of require statements for each customisation broken down into modes or languages.

I really like this because it’s quite simple to add a new mode or customise and existing one. Plus moving between Mac OS, Linux and BSD is a breeze, and sharing a config file for a particular mode is soooo much easier.

I highly recommend doing this sort of clean up to your own .emacs. After all who doesn’t like an organised workspace!

Original motivation here: http://www.emacsblog.org/2007/10/07/declaring-emacs-bankruptcy/