Re: [OT] Requiring packages which may be missing?

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Have a look at the use-package package. I have found it makes this much
easier. There are some complications associated with using it and
org-mode, due mainly to emacs being bundled with one version and another
vesion being available in both the gnus and org-mode elpa
repos. However, once you have that bit sorted, the rest really makes
managing your packages easier.

One of the nice things about use-package is that it includes the :ensure
keyword, which tells emacs to ensure that the package has been
installed. So you emacs init file ends up being essentially a lot of
use-package stanzas that are easy to maintain and ensure all the
packages are loaded. I keep my emacs init file on github and when I run
emacs on a different system, all I need to do is clone the repo and
start emacs. The first run will be a little slow as emacs installs all
the packages I need, but after that, it is fast - in fact, use-package
has options which can speed up emacs startup by delaying loading of
package (it sets up autoloads for you). I also find managing my
configuration much cleaner.

Yes, I am definitely a convert. There are wrinkles - it isn't magic and
you will go through some trial an error, but I've been using it for a
while now and am very happy with how much easier managing my init.el and
all my elpa packages is.

HTH

Tim

Loris Bennett writes:

> Hi,
>
> This is more of a general emacs question.
>
> I often use the same .emacs on various machines which may not have all
> the packages I normally load.  To get around this I use the Fabrice
> Niessen's 'try-require' function taken from
>
>   http://www.mygooglest.com/fni/dot-emacs.html
>
> Due to some recent  problems, I wanted to look at the  way I load things
> and wondered how others deal with missing packages.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Loris
>
> PS: I mainly use Emacs 25, but would be interested in Emacs 24
> compatibility.


-- 
---
Tim Cross