About the author

James Cherti is a Sr. Infrastructure as Code and Software Development Specialist with extensive experience and expertise in software development, Linux system administration, and computer networking. His robust background in the design, implementation, and management of reliable and efficient infrastructure and software highlights his profound skills and knowledge in these areas… (Read more about James Cherti)

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• Essential Emacs Packages for Efficient Software Development and General Text Editing
  by James Cherti
  In the pursuit of an optimized Emacs setup, I focused on enhancing defaults and minimizing the number of installed packages to maintain simplicity and efficiency: In this article, I will share the Emacs packages I use daily for software development and general text editing. Please share in the comments the Emacs packages you are using! Where can … Continue reading →
• Running Large Language Models locally with Ollama (compatible with Linux, macOS, and Windows)
  by James Cherti
  Running large language models (LLMs) on your machine can enhance your projects, but the setup is often complex. Ollama simplifies this by packaging everything needed to run an LLM, similar to Docker. Here’s a concise guide on using Ollama to run LLMs locally. Requirements Step 1: Install Ollama Download and install Ollama for Linux using: Step 2: … Continue reading →
• Emacs: Automating Table of Contents Update for Markdown Documents (e.g., README.md)
  by James Cherti
  When working with markdown files in Emacs (e.g., README.md), users may need to manually update the table of contents. Automating this process saves time and ensures that the table of contents remains consistent with the document structure. This article presents an Emacs Lisp code snippet that uses: The code snippet that updates the table of contents and … Continue reading →
• Emacs: Maintaining proper indentation in indentation-sensitive programming languages
  by James Cherti
  As codebases grow, maintaining proper indentation becomes increasingly difficult, especially in languages like Python or YAML, where indentation is not just a matter of style but an important part of the syntax. When working with large code blocks or deeply nested structures, it’s easy to lose track of the correct indentation level, leading to errors and decreased … Continue reading →
• dir-config.el – Automatically find and evaluate .dir-config.el Elisp files to configure directory-specific settings
  by James Cherti
  The dir-config.el Emacs package automatically loads and evaluates Elisp code from a .dir-config.el file found in the buffer’s current directory or its closest parent directory. This facilitates adjusting settings or executing functions specific to the directory structure of each buffer. For instance, you can use the dir-config package to: Installation To install the dir-config from MELPA: (use-package … Continue reading →
• Efficient Emacs startup and configuration with minimal-emacs.d
  by James Cherti
  Optimizing Emacs for speed and efficiency involves fine-tuning its startup process, managing essential settings, and handling package installations, etc. The minimal-emacs.d repository hosts a minimal Emacs configuration with early-init.el and init.el files designed to serve as a base for your vanilla Emacs configuration, offering a robust foundation for a better vanilla Emacs experience. Installation Execute the following … Continue reading →
• easysession.el – Easily persist and restore your Emacs editing sessions
  by James Cherti
  The easysession.el Emacs package is a lightweight session manager for Emacs that can persist and restore file editing buffers, indirect buffers (clones), Dired buffers, the tab-bar, and Emacs frames (including or excluding the frame size, width, and height). It offers a convenient and effortless way to manage Emacs editing sessions and utilizes built-in Emacs functions to persist … Continue reading →
• outline-indent.el – Indentation based Folding and Outlining in Emacs
  by James Cherti
  The outline-indent.el Emacs package provides a minor mode that enables code folding and outlining based on indentation levels for various indentation-based text files, such as YAML, Python, and other indented text files. In addition to code folding, outline-indent.el allows moving indented sub-trees up and down, promoting and demoting sections to adjust indentation levels, customizing the ellipsis, and … Continue reading →
• How to make cron notify the user about a failed command by redirecting its output to stderr only when it fails (non-zero exit code)
  by James Cherti
  Cron jobs can handle everything from system maintenance to running backups, but monitoring their success or failure can be difficult. One effective way to handle cron job errors is by utilizing a Bash script that sends the output to stderr only if the job fails, which generally makes cron to notify the user about the error that … Continue reading →
• Emacs: Enhancing up and down subtree movement in outline-mode and outline-minor-mode
  by James Cherti
  When editing outlined files (e.g., using the built-in outline-minor-mode, or packages like outline-indent.el, outline-yaml.el, etc.), handling subtrees efficiently can significantly enhance productivity, especially when working with complex documents. If you’re familiar with outline-mode or outline-minor-mode, you might have noticed that the built-in functions for moving subtrees up and down, outline-move-subtree-up and outline-move-subtree-down: Here’s how you can address … Continue reading →

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