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Quick Start
If you don't have an existing Emacs setup and want to run Spacemacs as your configuration, and if you have all prerequisites installed, you can install Spacemacs with one line:
shell:
git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $HOME/.emacs.d
Windows PowerShell:
git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $HOME/.emacs.d
If HOME
is not set in environment or in registry:
git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $env:APPDATA/.emacs.d
If you do have an existing Emacs configuration, look at the full installation instructions for other options.
Spacemacs is a new way of experiencing Emacs -- it's a sophisticated and polished set-up, focused on ergonomics, mnemonics and consistency.
Just clone and launch it, then press the space bar to explore the interactive
list of carefully-chosen key bindings. You can also press the home buffer's
[?]
button for some great first key bindings to try.
Spacemacs can be used naturally by both Emacs and Vim users -- you can even mix the two editing styles. Being able to quickly switch between input styles, makes Spacemacs a great tool for pair-programming.
Spacemacs is currently in beta, and any contributions are very welcome.
Comprehensive documentation is available for each layer by pressing SPC h SPC.
You can also check the general documentation, quick start guide and the FAQ.
If you need help, ask your questions in the Gitter Chat and a member of the community will help you out.
If you prefer IRC, connect to the Gitter Chat IRC server and join the
#syl20bnr/spacemacs
channel.
Last but not least there are a lot of high class tutorials available on YouTube:
A package manager if the OS doesn't have one already.
Spacemacs is an extension of a popular text editor called Emacs. So you'll need Emacs installed first.
Spacemacs requires Emacs 28.2 or above. The development version of Emacs is not officially supported, but it should nevertheless be expected to work.
git is required to download and update Spacemacs.
Tar, in particular GNU Tar, is required to install and update Emacs packages used by Spacemacs.
(Optional) The default font used by Spacemacs is Source Code Pro. You may customize your own font settings and choose another font. If you want to use this default font, it must be installed.
Spacemacs also uses fallback fonts to ensure certain Unicode symbols it uses symbols appear correctly. The fonts used are determined by the OS:
If the mode-line doesn't look similar to the picture at the top of this page, make sure you have the correct fallback font installed.
(Optional) Various commands in Spacemacs needs one of the following line searching program:
Grep is very slow but it's widely available on most systems and is used as an fallback option.
We strongly recommend ripgrep over other line searching programs, for its blazing fast speed. The following subsections helps you to install it.
Most Linux distribution ships a package manager already and if this is the case you are all set for this step.
If it doesn't, you may need to build the softwares mentioned below from their sources.
In most distributions, Emacs is installed via an emacs
package from the
package manager.
N.B. DO not install XEmacs because it's not supported by Spacemacs. XEmacs is an old fork of Emacs with various subtle differences.
N.B. Some Linux distributions support only Emacs versions older than 28.2. In this case you should build it from source instead.
Very likely Git is already installed on your system. Otherwise, you should
be able to install git
from your system's package manager.
Very likely Tar is already installed on your system. Otherwise, you should
be able to install tar
from your system's package manager.
(Optional) If Nerd Fonts and Nanum Gothic are available from your distribution's package manager, you should install it there.
Otherwise, the generic way to install it is:
Download the latest pre-built TTF
font from
https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/releases/latest and
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nanum+Gothic.
Extract the archive and move the font files to ~/.fonts
.
Refresh font cache with:
fc-cache -fv
(Optional) If your distribution is listed here, follow the instructions. Otherwise, you can download its pre-built binary or build it from source.
The most popular package manager on macOS is Homebrew, to install it:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Several options exist for installing Emacs on macOS:
Emacs Plus features additional functionalities over base Emacs.
brew tap d12frosted/emacs-plus
# install latest stable release, with Spacemacs icon and native compilation
brew install emacs-plus --with-spacemacs-icon --with-native-comp
You will require the latest version of Xcode Command Line tools, which can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Portal or by running the following command:
softwareupdate --all --install --force
Emacs Mac Port adds native GUI support to Emacs 28. And the full list of features is available here.
brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport
brew install emacs-mac
Emacs for Mac OS X is the binary build of GNU Emacs, without any extra feature.
brew install --cask emacs
To install git
:
brew install git
macOS ships with BSD Tar, but there are reports of weird issues so we require GNU Tar instead.
brew install gnu-tar
(Optional) To install Source Code Pro Font:
brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install --cask font-source-code-pro
Arial Unicode MS is shipped with macOS v10.5 and later so you don't need to install it manually.
(Optional) You can install ripgrep
via Homebrew
:
brew install ripgrep
We recommend using wsl2 with wslg support especially with a pgtk build of emacs and wayland. For the installation please refer to the linux installation section. When running emacs within your wsl2 environment emacs will be handled like any other windows application.
If this is not possible you can fallback to a native windows installation, however note that this will create a lot of subtle bugs especially with tls which we will most likely not be able to help with.
If you need to follow that path we recommend to at least use a package manager like Scoop to install the needed packages.
You can install Scoop via PowerShell:
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser # Optional: Needed to run a remote script the first time
irm get.scoop.sh | iex
Emacs can be installed in PowerShell:
scoop bucket add extras
scoop install emacs
To install git
in PowerShell:
scoop bucket add main
scoop install git
Windows 10 build 17063 and later ships with BSD Tar, but it's required to install GNU Tar instead to avoid possible issues. Alternatively, if you are running an earlier version of Windows, Tar isn't installed. In either case, you can install GNU Tar via:
scoop bucket add main
scoop install tar
To install Source Code Pro Font in PowerShell:
scoop bucket add KnotUntied_scoop-fonts https://github.com/KnotUntied/scoop-fonts
scoop install sourcecodepro
MS Gothic and Lucida Sans Unicode are shipped with Windows 2003 and later so you don't need to install it manually.
(Optional) You can install ripgrep
in PowerShell:
scoop bucket add main
scoop install ripgrep
The default installation downloads Spacemacs to the .emacs.d
directory in
your HOME
directory.
But in the case of Windows, HOME
is not set out-of-box. We recommend you to
set it as an environment variable, with the same value as environment
variable HOMEPATH
, which usually looks like C:\Users\<username>
.
Since Spacemacs will now be downloaded at $HOME/.emacs.d
, if it already
exists it'll be overridden.
Also, if you have either $HOME/.emacs.el
or $HOME/.emacs
, they will
appear before Spacemacs in Emacs's initialization steps. Thus they must be
renamed in order for Spacemacs to load correctly.
To backup/rename the aforementioned files/directory, in shell:
[ -d $HOME/.emacs.d ] && mv $HOME/.emacs.d $HOME/.emacs.d.bak
[ -f $HOME/.emacs.el ] && mv $HOME/.emacs.el .emacs.el.bak
[ -f $HOME/.emacs ] && mv $HOME/.emacs $HOME/.emacs.bak
or in PowerShell:
if( TestPath -Path $HOME/.emacs.d )
{
Rename-Item $HOME/.emacs.d $HOME/.emacs.d.bak
}
if( TestPath -Path $HOME/.emacs.el )
{
Rename-Item $HOME/.emacs.el $HOME/.emacs.el.bak
}
if( TestPath -Path $HOME/.emacs )
{
Rename-Item $HOME/.emacs $HOME/.emacs.bak
}
Now clone this repository with Git. The following work for both shell and PowerShell:
git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs $HOME/.emacs.d
In case you have a limited internet connection or limited speed:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.d
Now you can launch Emacs and Spacemacs will be loaded.
To install Spacemacs in a different location, we first need to introduce how Spacemacs is loaded:
When Emacs is started, it looks for the init file
in a deterministic way. The
default installation exploits it by occupying
$HOME/.emacs.d/init.el
and let Emacs use it as its init file.
In other word, in default installation, Emacs find and load
$HOME/.emacs.d/init.el
, which is then responsible to load other files in
$HOME/.emacs.d
.
If you want to install Spacemacs to a different location, you need to make sure it's loaded by Emacs in one of its init file.
For example, if you've cloned Spacemacs to $HOME/Spacemacs
, and if you use
$HOME/.emacs.el
as Emacs init file, then the following lines in
$HOME/.emacs.el
:
;; load Spacemacs's initialization file, "~" is equivalent to "$HOME"
(load-file "~/Spacemacs/init.el")
After cloning Spacemacs, the first time when you launch Emacs, Spacemacs will automatically install the essential packages it requires. This step is the bootstrap.
Once the bootstrap packages are installed, Spacemacs checks whether you have
an customization file $HOME/.spacemacs
, known as dotspacemacs
:
dotspacemacs
file for you.If you are new to Emacs and/or Spacemacs, it's fine to just accept the
default choices. They can be changed in the dotspacemacs
file later.
Spacemacs will download and install remaining packages it will require,
according to your dotspacemacs
. When the all the packages have been
installed, restart Emacs to complete the installation.
dotspacemacs
is the configuration file for Spacemacs, it's self
explanatory and is written in Emacs Lisp. Read
general documentation and
quick start guide for more information.
In case you want to store your dotspacemacs
at another location, say
under $HOME/.spacemacs.d
:
SPACEMACSDIR
to $HOME/.spacemacs.d
.$HOME/.spacemacs
to $HOME/.spacemacs.d/init.el
.In other word, set SPACEMACSDIR
to the parent directory of your
dotspacemacs
, and move dotspacemacs
to the said directory.
For Linux users, create spacemacs.desktop
in ~/.local/share/applications/
using this .desktop file as a reference. Change the Name
parameter to Name=Spacemacs
and the Icon
parameter to
Icon=/PATH/TO/EMACSD/core/banners/img/spacemacs.png
where PATH/TO/EMACSD
is
the path to your .emacs.d
directory, by default ~/.emacs.d
.
For macOS users, you need to download the .icns version of the logo and simply change the logo on the Dock.
Depending on the installed version of GnuTLS, securely installing Emacs packages may fail. If this happens to you please update your OS and Emacs. If you are behind a company proxy please trust the company firewall cert. We do not longer support disabling https due to security reasons.
(Windows) If the following error occurs after starting Emacs:
The directory ~/.emacs.d/server is unsafe
Fix it by changing the owner of the directory ~/.emacs.d/server
:
Source: Stack Overflow
(Windows) The period (dot) before a file or folder name means that it's a hidden file or folder. To show hidden files and folders:
File explorer options
View
tab at the topShow hidden files, folders and drives
OK
Spacemacs relies solely on a rolling update scheme based on the latest
changes available. To update Spacemacs, simply pull the latest
changes from the develop
branch:
Close Emacs and update the git repository:
git pull --rebase
Restart Emacs to complete the upgrade.
After updating Spacemacs, you should also
check if any updates are available for your packages. On the Spacemacs Home
Buffer SPC b h, click (press RET) on the [Update Packages]
button, or use the convenient keybinding SPC f e U
master
branchIf you are still on the old master
branch (i.e., if
git branch --show-current
shows master
instead of develop
),
you need to upgrade to develop
first.
«I feel that spacemacs is an aircraft carrier and I am playing table tennis
on the deck as a freerider.»
«I LOVE SPACEMACS AND MAGIT
That is all»
Spacemacs is a community-driven project, it needs you to keep it up to date and to propose great and useful configurations for all the things!
Before contributing, be sure to consult the contribution guidelines and conventions.
Once you've learned the Spacemacs key bindings, you can use them in other IDEs/tools, thanks to the following projects:
The license is GPLv3 for all parts specific to Spacemacs, this includes:
For the packages shipped in this repository, you can refer to the files header.
Spacemacs logo by Nasser Alshammari released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The best way to support Spacemacs is to contribute to it either by reporting bugs, helping the community on the Gitter Chat or sending pull requests.
You can show your love for the project by getting cool Spacemacs t-shirts, mugs and more in the Spacemacs Shop.
If you want to show your support financially, then you can contribute to Bountysource, or buy a drink for the maintainer by clicking on the Paypal badge.
If you used Spacemacs in a project, and you want to show that fact, you can use the Spacemacs badge:
For Markdown:
[![Built with Spacemacs](https://cdn.rawgit.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/442d025779da2f62fc86c2082703697714db6514/assets/spacemacs-badge.svg)](https://develop.spacemacs.org)
For HTML:
<a href="https://develop.spacemacs.org"><img alt="Built with Spacemacs" src="https://cdn.rawgit.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/442d025779da2f62fc86c2082703697714db6514/assets/spacemacs-badge.svg" /></a>
For Org-mode:
[[https://develop.spacemacs.org][file:https://cdn.rawgit.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/442d025779da2f62fc86c2082703697714db6514/assets/spacemacs-badge.svg]]
Thank you!