Git commandline had been my go-to way of using git for a long time, till I came across the world of emacs and magit. In this entry, we will set up vanilla emacs with magit.

Prerequisites

1. A cloned git repo in your local machine
2. Download vanilla emacs for macos from https://emacsformacosx.com and for other OSes from here.

Magit installation

1. If you are a first time emacs user, create a .emacs file in your root path

   touch ~/.emacs
   

2. Copy this snippet into your .emacs file to install the straight.el package manager

   (defvar bootstrap-version)
   (let ((bootstrap-file
          (expand-file-name "straight/repos/straight.el/bootstrap.el" user-emacs-directory))
         (bootstrap-version 5))
     (unless (file-exists-p bootstrap-file)
       (with-current-buffer
   	(url-retrieve-synchronously
        "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/raxod502/straight.el/develop/install.el"
        'silent 'inhibit-cookies)
         (goto-char (point-max))
         (eval-print-last-sexp)))
     (load bootstrap-file nil 'nomessage))
   

3. Append the following line to .emacs file after the above snippet to install magit

   (straight-use-package 'magit)
   

4. To start the installation, type alt-x and type eval-buffer

Using Magit

1. Open the emacs GUI - typing emacs in spotlight search (press cmd + space) should open up. If it doesnt help, just click on Emacs executable. Emacs can be found in this path /usr/local/bin/emacs

2. Once inside emacs, type the following Ctl-x Ctl-f, enter the path of a file in your cloned git repo and press enter

   • If you find the above step hard, you can just go to the menu bar of emacs and open your file using the GUI

3. The previous step should open up the file, now press Ctl-x g and voila, you should see the following window

   

4. There are collapsed and uncollapsed sections. Just moving to the section and clicking tab key will expand or collapse the section

   

5. Go to any file listed in the unstaged section and press tab key again which will show you the chunks. You can use the following commands on each chunk

   

6. To navigate this screen, you can use normal keyboard arrows or mouse. But to get the real speed advantage of emacs you can use the following shortcuts

   • n - will take you to the next chunk from current position
   • p - will take you to the previous chunk from current position
   • Ctl + n - will take you to the next line
   • ctl + p - will take you to the previous line

7. Once you have staged the right chunks and files by pressing s, you can press c, it will open the following screen with all available commit options

   

8. Lets just explore basic commit for now, press c again, it will open a buffer to type your commit msg

9. Press Ctl-c Ctl-k if you want to abort, or type the commit message and press Ctl-c Ctl-c if you would like to go ahead n commit

10. Similar to how c opened the commit options. Pressing shift-p (P) will open the push options

    

11. Pressing p again now will push the commit to your repository

If you are completely new to emacs, the inhouse tutorial in emacs can be invoked by typing Ctl-h t which will give you a quick way to learn emacs basics.