Irreal

Last month, I wrote about how I keep my two main machines in sync using git and how, after doing a git pull, I use a bit of Elisp to automate the reverting of my open buffers. After automating the reversion of buffers, I noticed that pulling all my repositories was also a pain. I had been just pulling the repository that I was going to use but that meant it was easy to forget which repositories were up to date and get things out of sync.

I decided to write a quick script to pull all repositories at once. That way I could just run the script when I began work on one of the computers and be sure that everything was up to date. Here’s the pull-repos script:

#! /bin/bash
# -*- mode: sh -*-
REPOS="/Users/jcs/org /Users/jcs/medical /Users/jcs/tax /Users/jcs/.emacs.d"
for r in $REPOS
do
    cd $r
    pwd
    echo "========================="
    git pull
    echo
done

There’s nothing exciting here, of course. Most of the script is involved with outputting information as to what repository is being pulled.

The pull-repos script is already a big time saver but to really automate things I made it callable from Emacs and folded in the revert-all-buffers functionality.

(defun sync-repos ()
  "Pull from git repos and then revert all buffers."
  (interactive)
  (switch-to-buffer "*SYNC*")
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (shell-command "/Users/jcs/bin/pull-repos" "*SYNC*")
  (revert-all-buffers)
  (end-of-buffer)
  (insert (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d %T\n"))
  (insert "Buffers reverted"))

Now I just call sync-repos and all my repositories are updated and all my buffers are reverted. One step when I first start using a machine: perfect.

Back in January I wrote about Magnar Sveen’s expand-region package that he described in Emacs Rocks #9. I recently loaded the code with ELPA and have been using it for my day-to-day work. I really like this package. It’s extraordinary how often selecting by semantic unit is the right thing. For a long time I selected text by typing 【Ctrl+Space】 and then manually moving the point with 【Ctrl+f】, 【Meta+f】 or something similar.

In almost every case expand-region will do the right thing with a call or two of 【Ctrl+=】. Take another look at Sveen’s video on expand-region and then download the code. You’ll need to set a keybinding for it in your .emacs or init.el. I use

(global-set-key (kbd "C-=") 'er/expand-region)

but you can, of course, set it to suit yourself. It’s also a good idea to checkout the package’s README on github, which explains how you can extend the package.

Xah Lee has a nice updated post on working with rectangles and some other loosely related matters. Every time I see these commands I think how useful they are and then promptly forget about them. I’m going to make an effort to try to use them more often to set them in my mind.

I especially like the replace-rectangle and string-insert-rectangle commands that let you replace the rectangle or add text to the beginning of each line of the rectangle. A sometimes useful related command is kill-rectangle that just deletes the rectangle (and puts it in the kill ring).

Lee also presents a bit of Elisp that shows how to copy a rectangle into the system’s clipboard. I like this not because it’s something I want to do but because of the techniques he uses to copy the rectangle into the kill buffer. It’s something that looks like it could be useful in other contexts.

SUMMARY OF COMMANDS