Tramp in Spacemacs
TRAMP (Transparent Remove Access, Multiple Protocols) is a package for editing remote files from within emacs.
One of my most ‘wat’ moments using emacs is discovering the incredible tramp mode.
My previous workflow for ssh was open a shell, ssh to host, edit file or whatever close connection. A lot of times what a really want to do is just paste something which I have from an already open buffer into a remote file, or copy a line etc. It turns out this is really easy to do from emacs.
SPC f f will bring up the file find in Spacemacs
Typing /ssh: will auto complete your hosts, if you haven’t added your public key to authorized_keyson the host machine you can use the user@<ip_or_hostname> syntax and spacemacs will prompt for the
password when connecting.
You can continue to auto complete your way to the file you want to edit, /ssh:<hostname>:/path/to/file and emacs will open the file in a new buffer.
Opening a shell
If you rather get a open shell on the remote machine you can do cd /ssh:<hostname>:/path/to/dir from eshell and emacs will open a shell in the specified directory. Other commands such as lsworks equally well.
Using SPC f f within the eshell will give you the context of the remote host
so you can open remote files using find file.
Editing as sudo
If you need to edit a file as sudo: SPC f f and use the /su:: or /sudo:: syntax, emacs will prompt for your sudo password, select a file, edit, save. Very convenient!
Docker & Vagrant
The docker.el package provides tramp integration, in spacemacs it’s just a matter adding the docker layer to your .spacemacs config.
This enables you to type /docker:/<container_id> which will use docker exec to run commands within the container.
The same goes for vagrant just use /vagrant:<vm_name>:/
Learn more
Tramp is very feature rich and I encourage you to check out the manual for more.
