<p>In the time honored tradition of using one’s blog as an Internet-enabled notepad, here’s a quick not on how I build GNU Emacs on macOS using homebrew and the emacs-mac port cask:</p>

<p>I’ve been trying to up my <code>use-package</code> game recently and converted my hand rolled package check and installer to <code>use-package</code>. I usually prefer to use packages from <code>melpa-stable</code> so I pin the default package source used by <code>use-package</code> to <code>melpa-stable</code> and override it where necessary That’s working well in general and looks something like this:</p>

<p>In Emacs, I usually end up enabling the same set of minor modes when I use one of my “writing modes”, namely modes like markdown-mode and org-mode. Enabling a single minor mode automatically is generally pretty easy via the appropriate mode hook, but enabling more than one minor mode requires one more level of indirection. Of course it does, because everything in computer science requires one more level of indirection :).</p>

<p>My <a href="https://www.lonecpluspluscoder.com/2017/07/30/building-emacs-25-2-on-xubuntu-17-04/">previous instructions</a> for installing a newer Emacs version on Ubuntu still work. Ubuntu (and in my case, XUbuntu) 19.04 ships with Emacs 26.1 out of the box. As usual I want to run the latest version - <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2019-08/msg00577.html">Emacs 26.3</a> - as I run that on my other Linux, FreeBSD and macOS machines.</p>

<p>In a previous <a href="https://www.lonecpluspluscoder.com/2019/04/08/unwelcome-surprise-homebrew-emacs-has-no-gui-after-os-x-mojave-update/">post</a> I mentioned that I upgraded my homebrew install of Emacs after Emacs 26.2 was released, and noticed that I had lost its GUI functionality. That’s a pretty serious restriction for me as I usually end up with multiple frames across my desktop. I did end up installing the homebrew <a…