early-init.el is loaded before package.el runs, before the first frame is drawn, and before init.el is evaluated. Anything that must happen that early lives here; everything else lives in init.el or one of the lisp/init-*.el modules.
The GC threshold is bumped to "effectively never" during startup; init-core restores a 16 MiB runtime value.
(setq gc-cons-threshold most-positive-fixnum
gc-cons-percentage 0.6)
Jotain targets LTR-only usage, so disable the bidirectional reordering and parenthesis algorithms — they otherwise run on every redisplay and are measurable on large files.
(setq-default bidi-display-reordering nil
bidi-paragraph-direction 'left-to-right)
(setopt bidi-inhibit-bpa t)
Prefer newer source files to stale .elc in batch mode only. Interactive sessions keep .elc preference for speed.
(setq load-prefer-newer noninteractive)
package.el stays on and package-quickstart is enabled — Nix (and, in dev, devenv) already provides most packages via load-path, so startup is fast without any trickery. use-package is built in on Emacs 29+, so the only thing we configure before init.el loads is imenu support and use-package-always-ensure.
(setq package-quickstart-file
(expand-file-name "var/package-quickstart.el" user-emacs-directory)
package-quickstart t)
(setq use-package-enable-imenu-support t
use-package-always-ensure t)
package-quickstart-file must be pinned here, not in init.el: startup.el runs its automatic package-activate-all between early-init.el and init.el, and looks up the quickstart file at whatever path package-quickstart-file holds at that moment. Leaving it at its default puts the file outside var/, and Emacs never finds it on later startups — quickstart ends up paying its refresh + byte-compile cost on every package-install without providing any actual speedup.
With use-package-always-ensure set to t, every use-package block defaults to "install if missing". Built-ins must opt out with :ensure nil.
package-quickstart-refresh (called after every package-install via package--quickstart-maybe-refresh) internally re-calls package-initialize, which trips the "Unnecessary call to package-initialize in init file" warning even though the call is legitimate. Emacs’s own code can’t distinguish that internal self-call from a user one, so we suppress the warning type directly:
(with-eval-after-load 'warnings (add-to-list 'warning-suppress-log-types '(package reinitialization)))
GUI chrome is disabled in default-frame-alist before the first frame is drawn — this is much faster than toggling the modes off afterwards.
(push '(menu-bar-lines . 0) default-frame-alist)
(push '(tool-bar-lines . 0) default-frame-alist)
(push '(vertical-scroll-bars) default-frame-alist)
(when (featurep 'ns)
(push '(ns-transparent-titlebar . t) default-frame-alist)
(push '(ns-appearance . dark) default-frame-alist))
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t
inhibit-startup-message t
inhibit-startup-echo-area-message user-login-name
initial-scratch-message nil)
Silence obsolete-symbol warnings from third-party packages we do not control. Real warnings still surface.
(setq byte-compile-warnings '(not obsolete))
Trade a bit of RAM for smoother redisplay.
(setq inhibit-compacting-font-caches t) (when (eq system-type 'darwin) (setq ns-use-thin-smoothing t))
On Emacs 30 with native compilation available, keep the eln-cache out of the config directory, silence the firehose of async warnings during init, and crank native-comp speed.
(when (and (fboundp 'native-comp-available-p)
(native-comp-available-p))
(setq native-comp-async-report-warnings-errors nil
native-comp-speed 2)
(when (fboundp 'startup-redirect-eln-cache)
(startup-redirect-eln-cache
(convert-standard-filename
(expand-file-name "var/eln-cache/" user-emacs-directory)))))
Nix sets TREE_SITTER_DIR to point at the grammar bundle produced by default.nix; early-init.el picks it up and wires it into treesit-extra-load-path.
(when-let* ((ts-dir (getenv "TREE_SITTER_DIR"))) (setq treesit-extra-load-path (list ts-dir)))
Ghostty advertises TERM=xterm-ghostty, but Emacs does not ship term/xterm-ghostty.el. Aliasing to xterm-256color makes term/xterm.el load instead, restoring modifyOtherKeys and 24-bit colour. This must be set in early-init.el because tty-run-terminal-initialization fires before init.el.
(add-to-list 'term-file-aliases '("xterm-ghostty" . "xterm-256color"))