Moving from spacemacs to my own config

I am trying to move away from spacemacs to my own config. But I want to have the packages that I have set up. I would like to move away from spacemacs for the sake of flexibility and control. Spacemacs is too late for some of the important items like native comp and their develop branch sometimes has bugs. I would like to minimize the changes in my workflow, if I cant keep them the same(keybindings et. al.). Replicating the same environment is proving to be cumbersome due to : \- Spacemacs setup has too many packages, I am not even 1/4th of the way through and already the literate config is a couple of thousands of lines long. \- I am used to the keybindings of spacemacs and replicating them is taking too much time. I have already built all the muscle memory and don't want a different set of keys. \- Going through all the documentation of the packages to get the exact setup as I had in spacemacs is very tricky. Sometimes spacemacs has some clever ways of handling things, which needs me to look into spacemacs code. \- Going over spacemacs code is complex. I am now left with the feeling that I am replicating spacemacs code in my config. Has anyone felt the same? how have you dealt with this?

If you want spacemacs, just keep using spacemacs, replicating it is an exercise in tedium. You could always try DOOM. I like their project better. I ended up on my own config. I started with vanilla emacs and worked my way up, just adding the things I needed. Once that was in place I started looking for and adding features I found off of other people. The most important part of doing your own config is organization. Too many of the config videos and configs from other users aren't organized very well or aren't documented as well as they could be. Figure out what works well for you and go for it.

I've tried a few times. It's a ton of work.

Doom seems better, but as with Spacemacs you are dependent on the maintainers. After switching back and forth a few times I started over from scratch. I took use-package and straight for package management as I don’t like the package install and customization framework. I gave up on being evil. It took about a week to stop expecting vim modes and keys to work and I haven’t had an urge to go back. I found the evil support got in the way of my understanding my config. I’m not doing anything heavy or serious these days, so my config is small. Works for me and I have a pretty good idea what’s where.

If you like Spacemacs, just stick to it. >Spacemacs is too late for some of the important items like native comp and their develop branch sometimes has bugs But writing your own config still means *you* have to implement features and fix bugs. Alternatively, why not help and contribute to Spacemacs?

I moved to my own modular config. It's a collection of org mode files organized into directories. The init looks for a compiled config.el, but it that doesn't exist, it processes all the org files in the config directory to build config.el. Each file is organized by feature or package or functionality. Each source block has an extra :section heading, which says where in the config.el file to place the code block. For instance, I have sections like "init", "features", "bindings" and "post". Source blocks can be disabled, and entire files can be disabled by adding a "#+disabled:" line. I like what I have. It works well, it's easy to understand and modify. I don't know if anyone else does it this way though. I did use a single org file at one time, but features have a way of needing to touch multiple sections of code without making lots of hooks and getting into difficult to debug situations. However to do this I had to write my own code to walk the directory, pull out each source block then write the single config.el file. When I have a change I run the command to recompile my config.el and elint it. There are definite advantages to building your own personal spacemacs/doom like config. I don't recommend throwing it all in a single org file though. It's also a lot of work unless you just stick with a very small base and add to it little by little over a long period of time.

I agree but I think for most people the whole process of submitting fixes and the like is a daunting task.