Re: one .emacs on multiple computers

["Jan Böcker" <jan.boecker@jboecker.de>]

On 05/13/2010 03:48 AM, charles snyder wrote:

> Can I just do something like:
> 
> (defvar cls-org-file "C:/Users/clsnyder/My Documents/My
> Dropbox/emacs_org/") ;; WINDOWS VERSION
> (defvar cls-org-file "/Users/clsnyder/Dropbox/emacs_org/") ;; IMAC VERSION
> 
> and then in each of the various .emacs files on each of the machines,
> just do something like this throughout the file:
> 
> (add-to-list 'load-path "cls-org-file" + org-mode6.35i/lisp" )
> (add-to-list 'load-path "cls-org-file" + personal.org
> <http://personal.org>" )

Yes, that approach works.

Create a directory for your org-mode configuration in your dropbox
directory, say /path/to/dropbox/emacs-config/.

Put the contents of your .emacs in, say, emacs-config/init.el.

In the .emacs file on each machine, put:

(setq cls/config-dir "/absolute/path/to/dropbox/emacs-config/")
; note the trailing slash!
(load (concat cls/config-dir "init.el"))


In init.el, set the `custom-file' variable to make the emacs customize
interface store its data under the dropbox directory:

(setq custom-file (concat cls/config-dir "customize.el"))

Assuming your org-mode checkout is at emacs-config/org-mode6.35i, use
(add-to-list 'load-path (concat cls/config-dir "org-mode6.35i/lisp"))
(require 'org)
; other org-mode setup stuff

If you want to have some machine-specific configuration, there is no
need to use different files for different machines -- just check for the
hostname.

For example, I use org-mode on my laptop and my n900 smartphone, so my
startup files include:

  (setq jb/system
        (cond ((string-match "N900" system-name) 'n900)
              ((string-match "pythagoras" system-name) 'laptop)
              (t 'unknown)))

and later I can do:

(when (eq jb/system 'n900)
  (blink-cursor-mode 0))

to disable blink-cursor-mode on the n900 to save battery power.
(Emacs idle CPU usage with blink-cursor-mode: 1.5%. Without: 0% :) )


Because the path to your org files is rather long, you also might be
interested in this post, where Nathan Neff describes a way to easily
define shortcuts to jump to frequently used files/headings:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/25106/

HTH, Jan