Circe 2.3 released

We just released version 2.3 of Circe, a Client for IRC in Emacs.

• Homepage

The package is available from github, MELPA stable and MELPA unstable. The latter will track further development changes, so use at your own risk.

Logging in New-Style Daemons with systemd

I wrote an article on logging in new-style daemons with systemd for the nice folks at Loggly. systemd makes writing daemons a lot simpler in a number of ways. Logging correctly is among them.

Can You Trust Your Logs?

I wrote an article called Can You Trust Your Logs? about trust issues in log output which was published by the good folks at Loggly Inc. – read more.

Buttercup 1.5 released

I just released version 1.5 of Buttercup, the Behavior-Driven Emacs Lisp Testing framework.

Buttercup is a behavior-driven development framework for testing Emacs Lisp code. It is heavily inspired by Jasmine.

• Homepage and documentation

Circe 2.2 released

We just released version 2.2 of Circe, a Client for IRC in Emacs.

• Homepage

The package is available from github, MELPA stable and MELPA unstable. The latter will track further development changes, so use at your own risk.

Buttercup 1.3 released

I just released version 1.3 of Buttercup, the Behavior-Driven Emacs Lisp Testing framework.

Buttercup is a behavior-driven development framework for testing Emacs Lisp code. It is heavily inspired by Jasmine.

• Homepage and documentation

Why Journald?

I wrote an article on Why Journald? which was published on the blog of the nice people at Loggly.

Circe 2.1 released

We just released version 2.1 of Circe, a Client for IRC in Emacs.

• Homepage

The package is available from github, MELPA stable and MELPA unstable. The latter will track further development changes, so use at your own risk.

Buttercup 1.2 released

I just released version 1.2 of Buttercup, the Behavior-Driven Emacs Lisp Testing framework.

Buttercup is a behavior-driven development framework for testing Emacs Lisp code. It is heavily inspired by Jasmine.

• Homepage and documentation

Elpy 1.9.0 released

I just released version 1.9.0 of Elpy, the Emacs Python Development Environment. This is a feature release.

Elpy is an Emacs package to bring powerful Python editing to Emacs. It combines a number of other packages, both written in Emacs Lisp as well as Python.

• Homepage
• Manual
• Features
• Installation

Quick Installation

Evaluate this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("elpy" .
               "https://jorgenschaefer.github.io/packages/"))

Then run M-x package-install RET elpy RET.

Finally, run the following (and add them to your .emacs):

(package-initialize)
(elpy-enable)

Changes in 1.9.0

Circe 2.0 released – Circe turns 10

We just released version 2.0 of Circe, the Client for IRC in Emacs.

Circe is a Client for IRC in Emacs. It tries to have sane defaults, and integrates well with the rest of the editor, using standard Emacs key bindings and indicating activity in channels in the status bar so it stays out of your way unless you want to use it.

This is an anniversary release – today 10 years ago, Circe has had its first commit! Since then, the code base expanded quite a bit and Circe has gained a lot of good features, contributed by over a dozen people over time. And the client now has a number of users.

It's a weird feeling when you realize that this piece of software you wrote because you were unhappy with the existing solutions not only has been with you for a decade, but has other people using and contributing to it.

Major thanks to all the awesome people I know through this software. On to the next 10 years!

• Homepage

Quick Installation

Evaluate this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
  '("melpa-stable" . "http://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t)
(package-initialize)

Then run M-x package-install RET circe RET.

After this, M-x circe should work.

Changes in 2.0

Buttercup 1.1 Released

I just released version 1.1 of Buttercup, the Behavior-Driven Emacs Lisp Testing framework.

Buttercup is a behavior-driven development framework for testing Emacs Lisp code. It is heavily inspired by Jasmine.

• Homepage and documentation

Buttercup 1.0 released

I just released version 1.0 of Buttercup, the Behavior-Driven Emacs Lisp Testing framework.

Buttercup is a behavior-driven development framework for testing Emacs Lisp code. It is heavily inspired by Jasmine.

• Homepage

Installation and Use

Buttercup is available from Marmalade and MELPA Stable.

Example test suite:

(describe "A suite"
  (it "contains a spec with an expectation"
    (expect t :to-be t)))

See the package homepage above for a full description of the syntax for test suites and specs.

If placed in a file named like my-test.el, this command executed in the same directory will run the suite:

  emacs -batch -l buttercup.el -f buttercup-run-discover

Elpy 1.7.0 released

I just released version 1.7.0 of Elpy, the Emacs Python Development Environment. This is a feature release.

Elpy is an Emacs package to bring powerful Python editing to Emacs. It combines a number of other packages, both written in Emacs Lisp as well as Python.

• Homepage
• Manual
• Features
• Installation

Quick Installation

Evaluate this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("elpy" .
               "http://jorgenschaefer.github.io/packages/"))

Then run M-x package-install RET elpy RET.

Finally, run the following (and add them to your .emacs):

(package-initialize)
(elpy-enable)

Changes in 1.7.0

Elpy 1.6.0 released

I just released version 1.6.0 of Elpy, the Emacs Python Development Environment. This is a feature release.

Elpy is an Emacs package to bring powerful Python editing to Emacs. It combines a number of other packages, both written in Emacs Lisp as well as Python.

• Homepage
• Manual
• Features
• Installation

Quick Installation

Evaluate this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("elpy" .
               "http://jorgenschaefer.github.io/packages/"))

Then run M-x package-install RET elpy RET.

Finally, run the following (and add them to your .emacs):

(package-initialize)
(elpy-enable)

Changes in 1.6.0

Programming Research I Would Like to See

When discussing programming and programming language research with others, I often feel that topics of research that would benefit my daily work the most are missing. The following is a quick overview of topics I think need more looking into.

Elpy 1.5.1 released

I just released version 1.5.1 of Elpy, the Emacs Python Development Environment. This is a bug fix release.

Elpy is an Emacs package to bring powerful Python editing to Emacs. It combines a number of other packages, both written in Emacs Lisp as well as Python.

• Homepage
• Manual
• Features
• Installation

Quick Installation

Evaluate this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("elpy" .
               "http://jorgenschaefer.github.io/packages/"))

Then run M-x package-install RET elpy RET.

Finally, run the following (and add them to your .emacs):

(package-initialize)
(elpy-enable)

Changes in 1.5.1

Elpy 1.5.0 released

I just released version 1.5.0 of Elpy, the Emacs Python Development Environment. This is a major feature release.

Elpy is an Emacs package to bring powerful Python editing to Emacs. It combines a number of other packages, both written in Emacs Lisp as well as Python.

• Homepage
• Manual
• Features
• Installation

Quick Installation

Evaluate this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("elpy" .
               "http://jorgenschaefer.github.io/packages/"))

Then run M-x package-install RET elpy RET.

Finally, run the following (and add them to your .emacs):

(package-initialize)
(elpy-enable)

Changes in 1.5.0

Why systemd?

This blog post is based on a talk I gave on 2014-05-21.

For a few years now, GNU/Linux distributions have been migrating away from SysV init and towards a plethora of different new init systems. For users who have been happy with SysV init, this can come as a surprise. SysV init simply works, why are so many distributions moving away?

In this blog post, I will try to explain what the problems of SysV init are, and also what solutions systemd offers for them.

I would like to note that I am not a big fan of systemd. I see it as a tool that is now widely used, nothing more.

The Sorry State of Emacs Lisp Package Archives

GNU Emacs 24 (released in June 2012) introduced official support for packages, that is, a way of installing extensions from a remote repository. This was a huge step forward for Emacs, as it not only allowed users to easily find and install extensions, but it also made it possible for extensions to build upon other extensions without having to tell the user “great you want to install this, just install this extensions and those five other ones, too.” It used to be that many extensions each re-implemented common functionality just to get around this problem. Now, we have a number of general-purpose libraries.

Two years into the age of packages, there are three (four) major package archives available, but they all have some serious problems, making none of them even remotely as useful as, say, Python’s PyPI.