Kill or Bury Alive

Have you ever killed a buffer that you might want to leave alive? Motivation
for killing is usually “get out of my way,” and killing may be not the best
choice in some cases. This package allows us to teach Emacs which buffers to
kill and which to bury alive.

When we want to kill a buffer, it turns out that not all buffers would like
to die in the same way. To help with that, the package allows us to specify
how to kill different kinds of buffers. This may be especially useful when
a buffer has an associated process.

Installation

The package is available via MELPA, so you can just type M-x package-install RET kill-or-bury-alive RET.

If you would like to install the package manually, download or clone it and
put on Emacs’ load-path. Then you can require it in your init file like
this:

(require 'kill-or-bury-alive)

Usage

I have noticed that people usually want to kill the current buffer. They
even rebind C-x k to kill-this-buffer. This makes sense, it’s natural
for us to care about buffers that are visible and active. It’s also
intuitive to switch to some buffer before killing it. If you use this sort
of workflow, you can add something like this to your initialization file:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x k") #'kill-or-bury-alive)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c p") #'kill-or-bury-alive-purge-buffers)

The second function purges all buffers (see its description below). C-c p
is just a key binding that I use myself, you can choose whatever you like,
of course.

API

Buffer designator is something that can be used to match a particular kind
of buffer. In kill-or-bury-alive, a buffer designator is either:

a string—a regular expression to match the name of a buffer;
a symbol—the major mode of a buffer.

kill-or-bury-alive-kill-with buffer-designator killing-function &optional simple

Kill buffers selected by the buffer-designator with killing-function.

Normally, killing-function should be able to take one argument: a buffer
object. However, you can use a function that operates on the current buffer
and doesn’t take any arguments. Just pass non-nil simple argument and
killing-function will be wrapped as needed automatically.

This function should be used to configure the package, it cannot be called
interactively.

kill-or-bury-alive &optional arg

Kill or bury the current buffer.

This is a universal killing mechanism. When the argument arg is given and
it’s not nil, kill the current buffer. Otherwise the behavior of this
command varies. If the current buffer matches a buffer designator listed in
kill-or-bury-alive-must-die-list, kill it immediately, otherwise just bury
it.

You can specify how to kill various kinds of buffers, see
kill-or-bury-alive-killing-function-alist for more information. Buffers
are killed with kill-or-bury-alive-killing-function by default.

kill-or-bury-alive-purge-buffers &optional arg

Kill all buffers except for the long lasting ones.

The long lasting buffers are specified in
kill-or-bury-alive-long-lasting-list.

If kill-or-bury-alive-base-buffer is not nil, switch to the buffer with
that name after purging and delete all other windows.

When arg is given and it’s not nil, ask to confirm killing of every
buffer.

Customization

This package can be customized via the customization system. Type M-x customize-group RET kill-or-bury-alive RET to try it out.

There are quite a few variables that you can modify to control behavior the
package. Let’s list them (we give their default values too).

kill-or-bury-alive-must-die-list => nil

A list of buffer designators for buffers that always should be killed.

This variable is used by the kill-or-bury-alive function.

kill-or-bury-alive-killing-function-alist => nil

AList that maps buffer designators to functions that should kill them.

This variable is used by kill-or-bury-alive and
kill-or-bury-alive-purge-buffers.

You can use kill-or-bury-alive-kill-with to add elements to this alist.

kill-or-bury-alive-long-lasting-list =>
  ("^\\*scratch\\*$"
   "^\\*Messages\\*$"
   "^\\*git-credential-cache--daemon\\*$"
   erc-mode)

A list of buffer designators for buffers that should not be purged.

This variable is used by kill-or-bury-alive-purge-buffers.

kill-or-bury-alive-killing-function => nil

The default function for buffer killing.

This function is used when nothing is found in
kill-or-bury-alive-killing-function-alist.

The function should be able to take one argument: buffer object to kill or
its name.

If the value of the variable is nil, kill-buffer is used.

kill-or-bury-alive-burying-function ⇒ nil

The function used by kill-or-bury-alive to bury a buffer.

The function should be able to take one argument: buffer object to bury or
its name.

If value of the variable is nil, kill-or-bury-alive--bury-buffer* is
used.

kill-or-bury-alive-base-buffer ⇒ "*scratch*"

Name of the buffer to switch to after kill-or-bury-alive-purge-buffers.

License

Distributed under GNU GPL, version 3.