How To Install elpa-flx-ido on Ubuntu 18.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install elpa-flx-ido on Ubuntu 18.04. elpa-flx-ido is allows Emacs Ido to use the flx sorting algorithm

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install elpa-flx-ido on Ubuntu 18.04.

What is elpa-flx-ido

elpa-flx-ido is:

The flx sorting algorithm for Emacs provides fuzzy matching for completion engines like Ido. It is similar to the fuzzy matching functionality of Sublime Text.

The user can input (i) characters from the beginning of the words of the desired match and (ii) substrings of the desired match. For example, when matching “save-all-buffers”, the user could input “sallb”, and when matching “eval-buffer” the user could input “ebuffer”.

The flx sorting algorithm implements an intelligent trade-off between word beginnings and contiguous substrings when ranking possible matches.

This package allows Emacs Ido to use the flx sorting algorithm.

There are three methods to install elpa-flx-ido on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install elpa-flx-ido Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install elpa-flx-ido using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install elpa-flx-ido

Install elpa-flx-ido Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install elpa-flx-ido using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install elpa-flx-ido

Install elpa-flx-ido Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install elpa-flx-ido using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install elpa-flx-ido

How To Uninstall elpa-flx-ido on Ubuntu 18.04

To uninstall only the elpa-flx-ido package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove elpa-flx-ido

Uninstall elpa-flx-ido And Its Dependencies

To uninstall elpa-flx-ido and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove elpa-flx-ido

Remove elpa-flx-ido Configurations and Data

To remove elpa-flx-ido configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge elpa-flx-ido

Remove elpa-flx-ido configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove elpa-flx-ido configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge elpa-flx-ido

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install elpa-flx-ido package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.