spacemacs

smooth-scrolling is now installed and enabled by default.
To disable it set the variable dotspacemacs-smooth-scrolling of your ~/.spacemacs to nil.
Related documentation here.

Missing fix for issue #115 in previous release

Better startup experience

• This release optimizes the startup of spacemacs regarding the UI elements configuration and the display of the default theme (solarized-light). The startup should feel smoother with no flickering or flashing effect.
• This improvements may reduce the overall boot time of spacemacs.

Fixes

• J normal state command behaves like Vim J (thanks to bonega and danielwuz)
• Fix <SPC> f e d to open the spacemacs dotfile (thanks to capdevc)
• org-agenda-files can be defined in spacemacs dotfile (thanks to herbertjones)

New experimental feature

• Leader can be triggered by pressing "jk" quickly in insert state, helm buffers and ido buffers. See documentation in readme.

Improvements and fixes

• New very cool functions available in ido minibuffer to open a buffer in a new window or frame as well as to browse the ido history, see documentation in readme (thanks to ralesi).
• < and > now correctly indent coffeescript code (thanks to danielwuz).

New contribution layer

• python is now a contrib which can be found in contrib/lang/python. To use it you have to add python to your dotspacemacs-packages variable in your ~/.spacemacs.
  • anaconda-mode is now used for code navigation, documentation lookup and completion
  • ac-anaconda back end for auto-complete

Thanks to danielwuz!

New key binding

• <SPC> f e d opens your ~/.spacemacs dotfile (thanks to ralesi)

Fixes

• Fix emacs and emacs-debug-init functions on Windows (thanks to ralesi)
• Fix a remaining bug in automatic orphan packages deletion algorithm

• remove helm-quick-update to improve helm feedbacks (thanks to tuhdo)
• various documentation fixes

This release is focused on text highlighting:

• Fixes #107 : Bad Interaction Between Highlighting Line and Match Highlighting
• Improves faces and colors for evil-search-highlight-persist and hl-anything

Readme:

• Fixes quick install command line with an absolute path (thanks to whatyouhide)

Various:

• Get rid of solarized theme submodule, replaced it with a regular directory
• .cache directory is now ignored in the .projectile file

Contribution System new features

• support for contrib categories (sub-directories of layers in contrib directory)
• support for additive configuration, if package P is declared in layers L1 then L2, the configuration of both layers for P will be evaluated in the following order L1 then L2. Moreover L1 and L2 can both use use-package with the appropriate properties.
• support for package exclusion on a per contribution layer basis with the optional variable L-excluded-packages where L is a layer name.
• orphan package deletion is now working as expected (ie. it has been fixed :-))

New contribution layer

• in the lang category, ESS packages were moved from spacemacs layer to its own contrib layer.

Fixes

• ruby-end now correctly works in ruby-mode ! (thanks to trishume)
• fix diminished lighter of smartparens
• fix fancy narrow mode (#103)

New packages:

• evil-escape-mode which implements all the fd escape stuff, uses key-chord as back-end (thanks to ralesi for the suggestion)
• evil-jumper (thanks to ralesi)
• evil-args (thanks to danielwuz)
• hl-anything, see readme here
• fancy-narrow (thanks to ralesi)

New contribs:

• company-mode contrib! (thanks to trishume)

Changes:

• evil-nerd-commenter bindings are now on the prefix <SPC> c instead of <SPC> n c, moreover the comment operator bindings is <SPC> ;. See readme here
• <SPC> <SPC> is now bound to ace-jump-word-mode instead of ace-jump-char-mod (thanks to danielwuz)
• new ex command :noh to clear persistent highlight (thanks to danielwuz)
• new text objects $, | and % (thanks to ralesi)
• gather cache files into a single directory .cache (thanks to ralesi)

Fixes:

• (issue #90) fix repeat bug with . and n or N (thanks to danielwuz)
• (issue #98) visual block broken

• New package evil-numbers to increase and decrease a number under point (documentation) (thanks to danielwuz)
• New key binding prefix r for registers (documentation)
• helm configuration tweaks (modifications) (thanks to ralesi)
• better auto-indent for coffeescript (modifications) (thanks to danielwuz)
• fix broken micro-states in Emacs 24.4

• new documentation section: Seaching (https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#searching)
• the behavior of * has been improved, in visual state, * performs a search of the selected region using evil-visualstar. In the other states, * performs a search of the symbol/word under point using auto-highlight-symbol
• auto-highlight-symbol now highlights any symbol in comments and strings
• key to change the range of auto-highlight-symbol is now r instead of c
• evil-search-highlight-persist has been added, to clear the highlight use <SPC> s c
• helm-swoop bindings are now <SPC> s s, <SPC> s S and <SPC> s C-s.
• don't pair apostrophe in markdown mode (thanks to trishume)
• use web-mode for html files (thanks to danielwuz)
• resize window when golden-ratio is enabled via t g
• add face color for evil-search-highlight-persist in solarized themes
• contribution guidelines have been updated

Do not forget to update the sub modules when you upgrade

• the develop branch was a mess. A new clean branch called new_develop has be created and used to create this release (will be renamed to develop soon)
• contribution guidelines are now in the file CONTRIBUTE.md
• PR guidelines have been updated to favor one topic per PR in order to be able to squash the PR into one commit
• Electric braces support with smartparens (thanks to trishume)
• Add NeoTree documentation to README (click here)
• Simplified NeoTree key bindings with lower key bindings (see documentation link above)
• Yasnippet snippets submodule URL which pointed to a fork of upstream repository has been replaced by the upstream URL
• Snippets folder is now in spacemacs/extensions/yasnippets-snippets
• C-k is now again bound to the default evil-insert-digraph and C-j, C-k are now defined in the correct map (thanks to danielwuz)

Do not forget to update the sub modules when you upgrade

Spacemacs layer:

• helm and neotree can now be used together (thanks to danielwuz)
• PR guidelines updated (see https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#pull-request-guidelines)

Users contribution layers:

• trishume: Better Ag support.

• golden-ratio friendly
• default evil state is now motion
• fd hide neotree

• C-j and C-k can be used to select auto-complete candidates (evil-insert-digraph in insert mode has been moved to C-i)
• <SPC> w p m shows the *Messages* buffer in a popup window, <SPC> w p p close the current popup window.
• New function spacemacs/remove-popup-display-config which can be used to disable popup windows for some modes (i.e. helm). More info in the tip of the readme file: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#tips-for-spacemacs-advanced-users

• Neotree normal state local key map (thanks to danielwuz)
• Evil-nerd-commenter is now a package again (24.4 byte compile issue has been resolved upstream)
• Add a pull request guideline (see https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#pull-request-guidelines)
• guide-key is now displayed in a buffer in graphical environment, seems more stable than the tool tip rendering which can get stuck sometimes
• New contribution layer ranger-control (thanks to trishume)

• evil-nerd-commenter is now working for 24.4 (https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#commenting)
• guide-key (thanks to ralesi) and guide-key-tip support (enabled by default, can be toggled with <SPC> t G) with golden-ratio compatibility (in a graphical env. guide-key is displayed in a tool tip, in a terminal it is displayed in a buffer)
• key binding for helm-projectile is now <SPC> p h

• projectile working
• use the projectile commander initiated with p (see doc: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#project-management)
• more support for fd exit everything
• faster boot time
• stable key bindings for ido-vertical-mode
• working lazy loading of helm
• describe functions binding with prefix h d (see: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#other-describe-functions)