Emacs .dir-locals.el Tutorial

Nyxt Configuration Exposé
1

Here’s another tutorial for a useful feature using the world’s best text editor: directory-local variables. Specifically, this will be about proper CL macro indentation, even when you don’t have a Sly/Slynk client running and connected to Nyxt.

Turns out, you can customize lisp-indent-function (or rather, common-lisp-indent-function) so that macros are indented properly instead of being treated like just another function. My .dir-locals.el file looks something like the following:

((lisp-mode
  .
  ((eval . (let ((macros (list 'define-configuration
                               'alex:if-let
                               'alex:when-let)))
             (mapc
              (lambda (sym)
                (put sym 'common-lisp-indent-function 1))
              macros))))))

The first line indicates that the following would be eval’d (with user consent) whenever Emacs’ lisp-mode gets enabled. The define-configuration macro in the list is obviously Nyxt-specific, with the alex namespace / nickname being a re-exported alexandria package, which has plenty of useful general macros.

This .dir-locals.el file you would place at either the root directory of your dotfiles’ project, or the directory where your config.lisp etc are located.

Enjoy!

2

Hmmm, that’s useful! Would you have time to open a PR with it, by any chance? It’s quite a lot of manual search for things, but you’ve already dipped yout toes in it, so you’re in a best position to make a reasonably working file :slight_smile:

3

Incidentally, I already suggested this but I guess @ambrevar didn’t understand what I was getting at…

Just so we’re clear: are you talking about Nyxt’s .dir-locals.el, or a sample .dir-locals.el file others can use for their configs, or what?

4

I’m talking Nyxt one!

5

I thought of it, but I’m not entirely sure it would be the best idea, at least for Nyxt proper, since you’d hope if someone was hacking on Nyxt, they’d have a REPL setup and thus wouldn’t need this…