Activities.el (new package for "workspace" management)

Emacs
21

Thanks for the tip @alphapapa. I’m guessing that a symlink for that directory from my git folder would work OK?

22

I’m not sure what you mean. Symlinks have to be handled carefully when configuring backup systems, because it’s easy to mistakenly backup the symlink itself rather than the file it points to.

23

I’ll copy the persist directory and it’s contents to my git folder for my emacs config and then link it in my .emacs.d directory.

I’ll let you know how it works out :grin:

24

Ok, yeah I think that should work. (I have my whole Emacs config in git, but the persist/ directory is ignored.)

25

Question for users, what if it worked like this:

  • Command activities-kill closed an activity and discarded its last-used state, so that the default state would be used next time the activity is resumed.
  • Command activities-suspend closed the activity and saved its last-used state, so that it would pick up where it left off the next time the activity is resumed.
  • When activities-mode is active, the default state is saved when Emacs is idle and when Emacs exits, so activities that are active will be resumed at their last-used state.

Would that be more useful than having -kill be an alias for -suspend? It would allow a way for users to essentially say, “What I’m looking at right now won’t be useful in the future, so next time I use this activity, load the default state.”

Or would it be too confusing?

I’m leaning toward useful, but I’d like to know what others think.

26

Very interested in trying this out however having some issues getting it installed. Here’s my use-package w/ elpaca. Would appreciate some guidance.

  (use-package persist
    :elpaca (:host github :repo "emacsmirror/persist"))
  
  (use-package activities
    :after (persist)
    :init
    (activities-mode)
    (activities-tabs-mode)
    :elpaca (:host github :repo "alphapapa/activities.el"))

I’m having to install persist first due to the melpa package being v0.5 and activities.el wants v0.6. Elpaca doesn’t seem to like attempting to pull in persist in that manner:

Debugger entered–Lisp error: (error “:local-repo "persist" owned by persist”)
error(“:local-repo %S owned by %s” “persist” “persist”)

It’s entirely possible there’s something I don’t understand about the workings of elpaca.

BTW, holler at me if this is better dealt with as an Issue in the activities.el repo.

thx

27

persist is hosted on GNU ELPA and is at version 0.6. There must be something wrong with your configuration. I doubt there’s a bug in Elpaca causing this, but if you can’t get it working with Elpaca, you’ll need to ask Nic.

28

Yea…no matter what I did elpaca just would not update persist beyond v0.5. I rm -rf’ed the ~/.emacs.d/elpaca directory and restarted and my persist and activities.el config loaded just fine.

29

Thank you for this package!

I’ve been using it since last week with just two activities so far. As you said, I feel that it would be more intuitive for me if the default state is the one that gets resumed after killing an activity.

30

Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad it’s useful to you.

I’ll take that feedback into account. I think I will make that change to the commands in the next version. I’ll probably let that change sit on the master branch for a little while before tagging a new release with it.

1 Like
31

Also only been using it a bit so far, but I think this makes sense. Maybe optionally with a prompt to save when killing a modified activity?

32

Hi.

When you say “closed and activity and discarded its last used state, so that the default state would be used…” are you referring to its last saved state?

Only asking for clarity.

I think it would be more useful with that functionality added, rather than activities-kill being an alias for -suspend

Cheers.

33

I’m afraid I don’t understand your question. :slight_smile:

34

I think it is whether the last saved state is the “default” state.

Thanks for a very interesting package! It seems to solve some issues I’ve had with context switching and keeping things in order … I have a tendency to veer off course a little too quickly.

35

FYI, I’ve rewritten the introduction at the top of the readme. Feedback would be appreciated. activities.el/README.org at master · alphapapa/activities.el · GitHub

36

Do you plan to create a guix package for Activities.el?

37

No, but some of my other packages are already on Guix, so maybe a Guix user/maintainer will.

38

FYI, I’m testing a new branch that adds a feature to automatically kill buffers associated with an activity when suspending it. It seems to work, but I’d like to get a bit more testing before merging. If you’re interested, please see: Add: (activities-kill-buffers) etc. by alphapapa · Pull Request #36 · alphapapa/activities.el · GitHub

@summeremacs

39

I’m not sure why activities.el wasn’t working when I first tried it but I’ve been pulling it from MELPA with elpaca and using it this week. Promising. Thanks for your hard work.

40

Note that activities is on GNU ELPA, not MELPA. :slight_smile: Anyway, thanks for the kind words.

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