Literate Emacs configuration with Org mode

Motivation

In 2021, I decided that my 1700+ line .emacs file, parts of which dated to 2014, was becoming too difficult to maintain. An Org mode-based set of configuration files seemed much easier to manage, and straight.el has made the process of syncing configurations across devices even simpler.

Usage

Escape hatch

In case you need to go back to your old configuration:

ln -s /path/to/legacy-dotemacs.el ~/.emacs

Then either reload .emacs or restart Emacs. Looks like you shouldn’t need to do this though.

How this works – correct this

.emacs is symlinked to dotemacs.el, which loads the necessary ~package~ and use-package packages in order for org-babel-load-file to process this file, =README.org=, which contains all the Emacs Lisp configuration goodness (excluding the stuff handled by customize-variable).

Configuration organization

core-config.org

Also includes main editing commands for

• Org mode (but not Org-roam)
• Emacs Lisp
• git

so that this file can be easily edited without loading additional extensions.

core-langs.org

Includes configuration for

• LSP mode
• Haskell
• Python
• Rust
• TeX/LaTeX/AUCTeX

extras.org

• Org roam
• markdown
• minor modes
• highly specific/project-oriented extensions