Set a default scratch buffer

Question

My emacs daemon for ocaml (I use more than one emacs daemon) starts in a tuareg scratch buffer. I am aware of initial-major-mode but this hasn't worked: the scratch is started before (setqinitial-major-mode 'tuareg-mode)` is evaluated.

Since I keep the initial-buffer-choice to scratch, I just run (tuareg-mode) and my scratch mode is modified as I want.

But now, when I kill the scratch, new scratch buffers are not in tuareg mode, so I added a little hack found on stackexchange:

(defun prepare-scratch-for-kill ()
  (save-excursion
    (set-buffer (get-buffer-create "*scratch*"))
    (tuareg-mode)
    (add-hook 'kill-buffer-query-functions 'kill-scratch-buffer t)))

(defun kill-scratch-buffer ()
  (let (kill-buffer-query-functions)
    (kill-buffer (current-buffer)))
  ;; no way, *scratch* shall live
  (prepare-scratch-for-kill)
  ;; Since we "killed" it, don't let caller try too
  nil)

(prepare-scratch-for-kill)

It works, but now I don't see my magnificent initial-scratch-message. I have tried to (setq initial-major-mode 'tuareg-mode), which normally modifies the scratch major mode. But it doesn't, even if I start a new scratch.

I would like to do it the proper way, emacs embeded way, but what I have tried doesn't work.

Answer 1

My original suggestion to the OP based on my own slightly misguided experimentation was this:

make sure that the mode you want to set as the initial-major-mode is loaded before you set initial-major-mode with (setq initial-major-mode 'name-of-mode). This seems to have solved the problem that the OP was having.

However, I have also tested changing my entire init.el to contain only the lines:

(setq initial-major-mode 'tuareg-mode)
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

and literally nothing else, and when I started emacs I got a *scratch* buffer in tuareg-mode.

This leads me to believe that something else was causing the issue, but I am happy that my suggestion could lead to a solution one way or another. Also, in my case tuareg-modewas installed through MELPA and would have automatically been added to the load-path, which might not have been the case for the OP, and this could be why I have no issue with the above configuration.

Emacs Redux also has this short, useful tutorial on how to solve the problem in question.

In general, I think setting initial-major-mode as described above in your ~/.emacs or init.el or whatever emacs config you use should be enough to set a default mode for your scratch buffer.

However, if you find that this doesn't work as was the case for the OP, it won't hurt to ensure that initial-major-mode is set to the desired mode after the package that contains that mode gets initialized. If setting initial-major-mode still doesn't work as expected, you can follow the advice in this accepted answer and check that the value has not been set in customize with M-x customize-option RET initial-major-mode RET. From here you can not only see what value this variable has been set to, but also change the value.