Emacs as an Operating System: Advanced Customization and Automation

Emacs as an Operating System: Advanced Customization and Automation

Emacs as an Operating System is a manifesto and field manual for turning Emacs into a cohesive, deterministic computing environment. Aimed at veteran Emacs users, polyglot developers, SREs, and research engineers, it teaches you to shape startup, input, display, and automation so the editor acts like a personal OS. If you already script, customize, and live in Emacs, this book shows how to design a reliable, high-performance system around it—without sacrificing flexibility. You’ll master early-init and daemonized boot, profile starts, and internalize the command loop, redisplay, and the buffers–windows–frames model. Write production-grade Emacs Lisp with lexical binding, macros, conditions, testing, and native compilation. Build reproducible installs via package.el, ELPA/MELPA policy, use-package, VC installs, and lockfiles. Design interaction with keymaps, transient states, and the completion fabric. Elevate projects with project.el, Eglot, Tree-sitter, processes/timers, TRAMP, Org Babel, and Magit-driven CI/CD. Prerequisites: strong Emacs fluency, comfort with Unix, Git, and basic Lisp. The book is precision-edited and typeset in LaTeX, blending rigorous explanations with annotated configurations, profiling traces, and repeatable recipes. What differentiates it is an architecture-first, policy-over-preference approach: reproducibility, security (signing, TLS, supply-chain integrity), and OS integration (emacsclient, systemd) are treated as first-class concerns. You’ll finish with a portable, testable, and maintainable Emacs that scales from laptop to fleet.