be-quiet.el - Emacs, be quiet!

The be-quiet Emacs package helps manage and minimize unwanted output in your Emacs environment. It is useful in contexts where controlling or suppressing verbosity is required.

Installation

Install using straight

To install the be-quiet using straight.el:

1. If you haven't already done so, add the straight.el bootstrap code to your init file.
2. Add the following code to your Emacs init file:

(use-package be-quiet
  :ensure t
  :straight (be-quiet
             :type git
             :host github
             :repo "jamescherti/be-quiet.el"))

Usage

The be-quiet macro

The simplest way to use the be-quiet macro is as follows:

(be-quiet
  (message "You will not see this message")
  (message "You will also not see this message"))

The be-quiet macro silences specific function calls while allowing you to capture their output. For example:

(let (output) (be-quiet (message "Foo")
                        (setq output (be-quiet-current-output)))
  (message "This was the last message: %s" output))

In this example, the message "Foo" is silenced, but its output is captured and stored in the variable output.

The be-quiet-advice-add function

To prevent certain functions from generating output, use the be-quiet-advice-add function.

For instance, to disable the message "Indentation setup for shell type bash" when sh-set-shell is called:

(be-quiet-advice-add #'sh-set-shell)

In this example, calling the sh-set-shell function will execute as usual without displaying any messages.

Here is another example to prevent recentf from showing messages during saving and cleanup:

(with-eval-after-load "recentf"
  (be-quiet-advice-add #'recentf-save-list)
  (be-quiet-advice-add #'recentf-cleanup))

Frequently asked question

Are there any other Emacs parameters that can help reduce the output?

In non-interactive sessions, you can further reduce output by using be-quiet-silence-emacs, which adjusts some global Emacs settings:

(when noninteractive
  (setq dired-use-ls-dired nil)
  (remove-hook 'find-file-hook 'vc-find-file-hook))

Identifying Functions to Silence in Emacs

You can assign a regular expression to the variable debug-on-message by adding the following line early in your Emacs init files. This will cause Emacs to invoke the debugger when a matching message is displayed during Emacs startup:

(setq debug-on-message "Regular expression")

License

• Copyright (C) 2024 James Cherti
• Copyright (C) 2013-2014 Johan Andersson
• Copyright (C) 2014-2015 Sebastian Wiesner

The be-quiet package is based on the shut-up package, originally developed by Johan Andersson and Sebastian Wiesner. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program.

Links

• be-quiet.el @GitHub