How to install plug-ins in emacs

September 26, 2023, Tuesday afternoon

I have to say that installing plug-ins in emacs is indeed more convenient than vim.

Although I once said that I should only use vim, it is too troublesome to install plug-ins in vim.

---

Table of contents

• Emacs configuration file location under Linux
• package manager elpa
• How to change the source of elpa
• List of installable plugins
• How to search for plugins
• How to install plug-ins
• Configure plugin

---

Emacs configuration file location under Linux

The default configuration file location is ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el

If you don’t have inti.el, you can just create it yourself.

package manager elpa

Starting from Emacs 24, Emacs has built-in elpa package manager, which can automatically download and install plug-ins.

Emacs 24 was released in October 2011.

elpa stands for Emacs Lisp Package Archive package management system.

elpa uses MELPA (Marmalade Emacs Lisp Package Archive) as the default plug-in repository source.

How to change the source of elpa

elpa | Mirror site usage help | Tsinghua University open source software mirror site | Tsinghua Open Source Mirror

According to the above web page, just add the following code to init.el:

(setq package-archives '(("gnu"    . "http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/elpa/gnu/")
                         ("nongnu" . "http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/elpa/nongnu/")
                         ("melpa"  . "http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/elpa/melpa/")))
(package-initialize) ;; You might already have this line

List of installable plugins

First press Alt-x so that you can enter commands in Emacs.

Then enter the following command:

package-list-packages

Next, we will list various plug-ins.

How to search for plugins

Press Ctrl+s to search for plugins

How to install plug-ins

Press Alt+x and enter the following command:

package-install

Next enter the name of the plug-in you want to download

Configure plugin

After the plug-in is installed successfully, it needs to be configured accordingly in init.el to use it normally.

Each plug-in has different configurations. You can go to the official website of the plug-in or search elsewhere on the Internet for how a certain plug-in is configured.

For example, the official website of the company plug-in explains how to configure it.

company-mode for Emacs