There are some beautiful Emacs mode line packages out there, including the gorgeous doom-modeline. Since I don’t want my themeing to depend on any external packages, I’ve implemented some of features that I like. The results of all this can be found in my dotfiles.
Size
One of the great things about the doom-modeline is its size. This can be approximated by forming a box around the mode line face (be sure to set it for both the active and inactive mode line). I used an online gradient generator to pick colors close to what I use as the background.
(set-face-attribute 'mode-line nil
:background "#353644"
:foreground "white"
:box '(:line-width 8 :color "#353644")
:overline nil
:underline nil)
(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-inactive nil
:background "#565063"
:foreground "white"
:box '(:line-width 8 :color "#565063")
:overline nil
:underline nil)
Git Information
Getting the git branch in the mode line was harder than it should have been. There are a bunch of emacs built-in version control variables and functions, but none that directly get the branch information. The main problem is that the vcs-hooks.el package overloads functions and variable names. This means that you have to get the elisp syntax exactly correct for calling a funciton or returning a variable.
This is a function call which does the wrong thing:
(vc-mode)
Version Control minor mode.
This minor mode is automatically activated whenever you visit a file under
control of one of the revision control systems in `vc-handled-backends'.
VC commands are globally reachable under the prefix `\[vc-prefix-map]':
\{vc-prefix-map}
This returns the value of the variable instead:
vc-mode
Git:develop
Luckily, the doom-modeline package gets it right.
(defun vc-branch ()
(let ((backend (vc-backend buffer-file-name)))
(substring vc-mode (+ (if (eq backend 'Hg) 2 3) 2))))
(vc-branch)
develop
This function cuts off the version control prefix (such as “Git:” or “Hg:”).
Right-Justified Text
I also like that some of the information is right-justified. This snippet fills in spaces for the same effect. Note that I only put the major mode name on the right
'(:eval (propertize
" " 'display
`((space :align-to (- (+ right right-fringe right-margin)
,(+ 3 (string-width mode-name)))))))
```
Be sure to wrap with `'(:eval )` to ensure that this spacing is re-evaluated when mode-name changes.
## Summary
Overall, I’m very happy with this mode line. The implementation is simple, yet it looks decent in terminal Emacs and absolutely fabulous in the GUI.
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