Posts tagged Emacs

If you recently upgraded to Emacs 23 from Carbon Emacs on your Mac you might have found all the control keys are bound wrong. Anyway it’s easy to fix, add these lines to your .emacs and restart Emacs.

; Setup the Mac keys
(setq mac-option-key-is-meta nil)
(setq mac-command-key-is-meta t)
(setq mac-option-modifier nil)
(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)
(global-set-key (kbd "<kp-delete>") 'delete-char)

If you use dired-do-query-replace-regexp to replace things in read-only files the bell will sound and the batch replace will stop. Here’s a quick workaround, cheers to bojohan in #emacs for helping me with this:

M-x set-variable RET inhibit-read-only RET t RET

Then do your replace again and finally set the variable back to nil again!

I was having a problem on my macbook that I had to login every time I wanted to save or open a new file through Tramp. The weird thing was that tab completion only required me to login once.

Anyway I got to the bottom of it, just add this to your .emacs:

(setq tramp-default-method "ssh")

I ran into a problem today where my Slime connection would suddenly drop if I loaded a file that contained UTF characters.

Luckily the #lisp bods saved the day, here’s how you fix it:

1. Add (setq slime-net-coding-system ‘utf-8-unix) to your .emacs
2. Add the :coding-system “utf-8-unix” keyword parameter to your (swank:create-server) call

There’s more information available here.

Cheers, Dave.

Here’s a guide to take a fresh Debian stable (etch) install and turn it into a viable Lisp web development environment. (Including Emacs22, SBCL, Slime, Hunchentoot, Apache2 all working together from boot)

Please note because this is aimed at a totally fresh Debian stable install you are going to need to be selective with the commands if it’s not a fresh install or if you are using a different version of Debian.

All the commands assume you are logged in as root on your soon-to-be web server.

Installation Steps

# Install Emacs 22
echo deb http://hype.sourceforge.jp/f etch backports >> /etc/apt/sources.list
wget http://hype.sourceforge.jp/A7F20B7E.gpg -O- | apt-key add -
apt-get update
apt-get install emacs22

# Install the other required packages
apt-get install darcs cvs subversion curl git-core cogito sbcl make gcc build-essential detachtty 

# Grab clbuild
cd /usr/src
darcs get http://common-lisp.net/project/clbuild/clbuild
cd clbuild && chmod +x clbuild

# Install the different bits and bobs with clbuild
./clbuild update sbcl
./clbuild compile-implementation sbcl
echo cl-unicode get_darcs http://common-lisp.net/~loliveira/ediware/cl-unicode >> projects
echo metabang-bind get_darcs http://common-lisp.net/project/metabang-bind >> projects
echo stefil get_darcs http://common-lisp.net/project/stefil/darcs/stefil >> projects
echo cffi get_darcs http://common-lisp.net/project/cffi/darcs/cffi >> projects
./clbuild build cl-unicode cl-ppcre hunchentoot vecto cl-who slime metabang-bind iterate stefil babel cffi

# Make a lisp image
./clbuild dumpcore --installed

# Setup lisp to start on boot
cd /etc/init.d
wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/lisp-boot
chmod a+x lisp-boot
cd /etc/rc2.d
ln -s ../init.d/lisp-boot S98lispboot
mkdir /var/run/lisp

# Add the lisp user for lisp to run as
adduser lisp-user
touch /var/log/detachtty.log
touch /var/log/lisp-app-dribble
chown lisp-user:lisp-user /var/log/detachtty.log
chown lisp-user:lisp-user -R /var/run/lisp
chown lisp-user:lisp-user /var/log/lisp-app-dribble

# Make it so lisp will start the webserver and swank server each time
cd /usr/src/clbuild/
mkdir /var/lisp && cd /var/lisp
wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/server.lisp
mkdir images && cd images
wget http://www.lisperati.com/lisplogo_alien_128.png
chmod g+w -R /var/lisp
chown -R lisp-user:lisp-user /var/lisp

# Grab Apache2 and set it up with modlisp
apt-get install apache2 cl-modlisp libapache-mod-lisp apache2-threaded-dev
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
rm default && wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/default
cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/lisp.load
wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/lisp.conf
cd /usr/lib/apache2/modules
wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/mod_lisp2.so

# Get rid of the old SBCL that comes with Debain (Thanks Todd)
apt-get remove sbcl
echo SBCL_HOME=/usr/src/clbuild/target/lib/sbcl >> /etc/profile
ln -s /usr/src/clbuild/target/bin/sbcl /usr/bin/sbcl
ln -s /usr/src/clbuild/target/lib/sbcl /usr/local/lib/sbcl
cd /usr/src/clbuild/target/lib/sbcl && rm -r site-system
ln -s /usr/lib/sbcl/* .

# Start it all running
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
/etc/init.d/lisp-boot start

# Set up emacs (Do as the user who will use emacs)
cd ~ && wget http://www.kzar.co.uk/lisp-install/.emacs

Usage

• Browse to http://SERVERNAME/lisp to view your website.
• Type emacs /var/lisp/server.lisp to start editing the little example page.
• Type M-x slime-connect RET RET in Emacs to connect to the running Lisp REPL

Notes

• Add your user to the lisp-user group to edit the files
• Make sure you have downloaded the .emacs for your user so slime-connect works properly

Leave a comment if you hit a problem and I’ll try and help - Dave.

Edit: Thanks to Todd for some good feedback, I have added an additional stanza of commands that helps get rid of Debian’s old SBCL version and let’s the nice new one still use some of the Debian installed cl package. (That’s the hope anyway, let me know if it worked for you / if there’s a better way to do that part)