The GNU Emacs Architecture: Unlocking the Core [pdf]

(diva-portal.org)

149 points | by cenazoic 4 days ago

4 comments

  • iLemming 3 days ago

    It looks great. I have not read it to completion just yet, but merely scrolling through the document leaves me with a feeling that the author got tired and decided "this is a good stopping point."

    To be fair, writing a book about Emacs is a Sisyphean effort by definition - this sea is a bottomless abyss of hackery abundance, and any meaningful effort to explain it is worth a celebration.

    • anthk 3 days ago

      The Emacs' bundled documentation on Elisp (both the intro and the rest) are pretty much complete enough.

      On Elisp and multithreading/processing, well, just look at bordeaux-threads in Common Lisp where the support is not universal for Clisp. SBCL and ECL work, but...

      • FergusArgyll 3 days ago

        I have a silly little vibe coded extension where I can star certain HN commenters so I know who to look for in which threads (just puts a small symbol next to the username)

        You are for emacs, happy to see you here... :)

      • cenazoic 4 days ago

        This is a bachelor's thesis from University of Uppsala submitted in March 2026.

        I was having trouble accessing the Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet site (linked in headline) directly, so uploaded it here (link expires in 3 days):

        https://temp.sh/CVzcQ/emacs-arch-thesis.pdf

      • aaptel 1 hour ago

        This is great! You should make a web version or add it to the wiki.

        I started the Hacker's guide on the emacs wiki many years back. I think this doc was much needed.

        • hgp22 3 days ago

          Love to see that Emacs can still capture the atention of new CS students.