Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

Prelude is an enhanced Emacs 25.1+ distribution that should make your experience with Emacs both more pleasant and more powerful.
https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

emacs emacs-distributions emacs-lisp emacs-prelude

Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation

Prelude is an enhanced Emacs 25.1+ distribution that should make your experience with Emacs both more pleasant and more powerful.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
[![License GPL 3][badge-license]](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt)

[![CI](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/workflows/CI/badge.svg)](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/actions/workflows/ci.yml)

[![Patreon](https://img.shields.io/badge/patreon-donate-orange.svg)](https://www.patreon.com/bbatsov)

[![Discord](https://img.shields.io/badge/chat-on%20discord-7289da.svg?sanitize=true)](https://discord.gg/3Cf2Qpyry5)



Emacs Prelude

=============



Prelude is an Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the default

Emacs experience.  Prelude alters a lot of the default settings,

bundles a plethora of additional packages and adds its own core

library to the mix. The final product offers an easy to use Emacs

configuration for Emacs newcomers and lots of additional power for

Emacs power users.



Prelude is compatible **ONLY with GNU Emacs 25.1+**. In general you're

advised to always run Prelude with the latest stable Emacs release.



You can support the development of Prelude via

[GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/bbatsov),

[ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/bbatsov),

[PayPal](https://www.paypal.me/bbatsov) and

[Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/bbatsov).



## Features



* Improved UX, that's still in line with Emacs traditions

* Sane defaults of baseline Emacs functionality

* Automatic installation of many major programming modes on demand

* A curated set of 3rd party packages to enhance the base functionality

* Simple modular architecture

* Easy customization



Check out our [user manual](https://prelude.emacsredux.com) for more information.



## Fast Forward



Assuming you're using an Unix-like OS (`*BSD`, `GNU/Linux`, `macOS`, `Solaris`,

etc), you already have a recent version of Emacs installed, as well as `git` & `curl` you

can skip the whole manual and just type in your favorite shell the

following command:



```shellsession

$ curl -L https://git.io/epre | sh

```



You can now power up your Emacs, sit back and enjoy Prelude.



There are two environment variables you can use to control the

source repository and the installation directory. To change the

installation directory:



```shellsession

$ export PRELUDE_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.emacs.d" && curl -L https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh | sh

```



To change the source repository:



```shellsession

$ export PRELUDE_URL="https://github.com/yourname/prelude.git" && curl -L https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/raw/master/utils/installer.sh | sh

```



Note that the installer will back up any existing `.emacs` file or

`.emacs.d` since it will unpack Prelude's code in `.emacs.d`. If

you're doing a manual install make sure you don't have a `.emacs` file

or back up your existing `.emacs.d` directory manually.



**Important:** Don't forget to adjust your `prelude-modules.el` file in your personal directory

once the installation is done. By default most of the modules

that ship with Prelude are **not** loaded.



## Philosophy



Prelude's philosophy is quite simple:



* simple

* easy to understand and extend

* stable

* a foundation for you to build upon, as opposed to some end-user product



This means that it intentionally doesn't pack all the bells and whistles that it could.

Prelude aims to enhance the classic Emacs experience without deviating a lot from it - e.g.

it would never enable something like `evil-mode` (vim keybindings) by default and so on.



All the third-party packages that it bundles are carefully vetted and are known to be of

good quality and to have reliable maintainers. That generally means that Prelude's unlikely

to immediate adopt some shiny new package, that has established tried and true alternatives.



In practice this translates to the following:



* Prelude is less opinionated than distros like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs (meaning it's closer to the standard Emacs experience)

* Prelude installs relatively few additional packages by default

* Most modules in Prelude are opt-in instead of opt-out (you'll notice the default config enables only a handful of modules)

* Most modules (e.g. modules for programming languages) are pretty short and feature setup only for essential packages (in some cases that be just the major mode for the language in question)

* You don't really need to track Prelude's upstream - you're encouraged to just fork it and use it as the basis for your own configuration.



Remember that the ultimate goal of every Emacs user is to create an Emacs setup that reflects their own experience, needs, goals and ideas. Just like Lisp,

Emacs is nothing but a raw building material for the perfect editing experience.



More installation options are discussed [here](https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/installation/).



## User Manual



While Emacs Prelude is pretty simple at its core, it does have some specifics that

are worth learning - e.g. configuration options, load order of modules and personal settings

and so on.



Check out our [user manual](https://prelude.emacsredux.com) for more information.



You can also find a lot of information about specific Prelude features and the rationale behind them on

my Emacs blog [Emacs Redux](https://emacsredux.com).



## crux and super-save



A lot of utility commands that used to be part of Prelude were eventually extracted to the [crux](https://github.com/bbatsov/crux) package,

so they'd be easily available to more people.

These days Prelude simply depends on that package.



The [super-save](https://github.com/bbatsov/super-save) package also used to be part of Prelude in the past.



## Known issues



Check out the project's

[issue list](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/issues?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open)

a list of unresolved issues. By the way - feel free to fix any of them

and send me a pull request. :-)



## Support



Support is available via several channels:



* Prelude's Google Group 

* Prelude's Freenode channel (`#prelude-emacs`)

* [Gitter](https://gitter.im/bbatsov/prelude)



## Contributors



Here's a [list](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/contributors) of all the people who have contributed to the

development of Emacs Prelude.



## Bugs & Improvements



Bug reports and suggestions for improvements are always

welcome. GitHub pull requests are even better! :-)



## License



Copyright © 2011-2023 Bozhidar Batsov and

[contributors](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/contributors).



Distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 3



[badge-license]: https://img.shields.io/badge/license-GPL_3-green.svg