Paul's Weblog

I recently had something of an Emacs overload after discovering two separate, great, add-ons within a couple of days of each other. Either would have been bearable, but I'm afraid the two together compels me to post; and following earlier success with the what-I-see-is-what-you-get approach, you'd better get ready for more screenshots…

First was TRAMP mode. This has been around for years, but was still new to me, and might be to you too. (If not, hey — what can I do?)

The basic idea is that you can use SSH to let you edit files on any machines you have access to. TRAMP logs in via SSH, pulls a copy of the file back, and lets you work on it as if it were local. Some pictures will give you a better idea.

• First, since I'm running Ubuntu, I just install the package with:
  

  $ sudo aptitude install tramp
  

• Then we load Emacs, specify the file name in the form / <user> @ <host> : <path> and we're off.
  Let's have a look at my remote .emacs file:
  
• Wait for a few seconds for TRAMP to log in and figure out what the shell at the other end's capable of:
  
• That's it; the file's loaded. You can edit it, save it, or write to a different name if you like; the fact that the file's on another machine is entirely transparent.
  

TRAMP also handles other communications methods, such as scp, rsh, telnet, plink (distributed with Putty on Windoze), sudo (for editing as someone else), and rsync. You can also do tab completion on file and directory names, or use Dired mode (Emacs' file explorer) on the remote filesystem, should you feel the need.

I also discovered the joys of AUCTeX, but you'll have to wait until next time to see those.

Enjoy!