+++
title = "Literate configuration of Elfeed"
author = ["Michał Sapka"]
date = 2023-06-02T23:00:00+02:00
categories = ["emacs"]
draft = false
weight = 2003
abstract = "Setting up config inside an org file"
[menu]
  [menu.emacs-guides]
    weight = 2003
    identifier = "literate-configuration-of-elfeed"
    parent = "elfeed"
    name = "Literate configuration"
+++

Recently I've been toying with a literate configuration[^fn:1] of Emacs.
My init.el took a straightforward form:

```emacs-lisp
(org-babel-load-file "~/.emacs.d/config.org")
```

And all of my configuration lives in an org-file.
This alone gives me very little benefit for now, but in the future, it will make it easier to have it as a dedicated page on this site.

However, one thing completely surprised me: the elfeed configuration.
Until now, I used the standard way of configuring feeds with Elisp.
It works, but what it is not is readable.
A list of:

```emacs-lisp
("https://gideonwolfe.com/index.xml" blog imporant)
("https://fabiensanglard.net/rss.xml" blog important)
("https://protesilaos.com/master.xml" emacs)
```

is far from being manageable and requires constant manual labor.


## Elfeed-org {#elfeed-org}

One of the packages expanding capabilities of elfeed is elfeed-org[^fn:2].
It allows configuring the list of feeds with a standard org tree.
Since my config is now also an org file, nothing stops me from adding the list as an org-tree inside my config org-file! I set it up via:

{{<highlight lisp "linenos=table,linenostart=199,hl_lines=7">}}

```org
*** elfeed-org

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(use-package elfeed-org
  :ensure t
  :config
  (setq rmh-elfeed-org-files (list "~/.emacs.d/config.org"))
  (elfeed-org))
#+END_SRC
```

Therefore, I am now pointing at the same file to become the data source for elfeed-org as the rest of my config.
Just a few lines down, I start to define my list of subscriptions:

```org
*** Feeds :elfeed:

**** Blogs

***** https://gideonwolfe.com/index.xml      :important:
***** https://fabiensanglard.net/rss.xml.    :important:

**** Emacs

***** https://protesilaos.com/master.xml     :important:
```

Much more readable! Elfeed-org will ignore the entire outer tree and extract the feeds from leaves under the \`:elfeed:\` tag.

[^fn:1]: : <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming>
[^fn:2]: : <https://github.com/remyhonig/elfeed-org>