4 ms·

It isn't an official part of Emacs, but no Emacs user should go without installing el-get, the meta-package-manager for Emacs. https://github.com/dimitri/el-ge

by nyellin 15y ago

It isn't an official part of Emacs, but no Emacs user should go without installing el-get, the meta-package-manager for Emacs. https://github.com/dimitri/el-get https://github.com/dimitri/el-get El-get can install and update elisp from git, svn, http, and EmacsWiki. (It also wraps ELPA and apt-get where packages exist.) If el-get doesn't have a recipe for your favorite Emacs extension, please consider adding the recipe and pushing to GitHub. (It doesn't take long - most recipes are only a few lines long.) Don't forget to issue a pull request for the rest of us.

justinhj 15y ago
I use package.el Any advantage to swapping to el-get?
- nyellin 15y ago
  Yes, package.el doesn't install arbitrary snippets from anywhere on the internet.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    It takes about five minutes to take a library that isn't packaged and publish it on Marmalade, and then anyone can depend upon it. el-get made lots of sense back in the day when package.el only supported tromey.com, but now that there's a community repository I don't see the point.
    - nyellin 15y ago
      OK. My old complaints against package.el were as follows: 1. Packages need to be updated manually by maintainers. I can't use package.el to install the master branch of my favorite project on GitHub, or an old snippet on EmacsWiki. 2. Marmalade (the community repository) has licensing requirements for package inclusion. Are those two assumptions incorrect?
      - technomancy 15y ago
        > 1. Packages need to be updated manually by maintainers. Yes, but considering uploading new versions can be done with M-x marmalade-upload-buffer, generally Marmalade encourages short release cycles. So there's not much reason to ever work from master unless you're hacking on it yourself, in which case you already have it checked out. > 2. Marmalade (the community repository) has licensing requirements for package inclusion. This is not specific to Marmalade since Emacs itself has licensing requirements. Every elisp library is a derivative work of Emacs itself, therefore it must be distributed under the same license. EDIT: Perhaps you're thinking of elpa.gnu.org? That repository requires copyright assignment for libraries to be included, but Marmalade does not.
        nyellin 15y ago
        OK. I was wrong about licensing requirements. I think you're slightly confused about el-get's purpose: it isn't to replace package.el. el-get supplements package.el and provides options for people who want to run the latest and greatest versions of libraries, or who can't be bothered to monitor the odd elisp snippet and update Marmalade every time it changes. Personally, I find el-get recipes so easy to install and create that I never use package.el at all, but that isn't the goal of el-get developers. Here is an example recipe for el-get. I haven't tried creating uploading anything to Marmalade yet, so I can't compare the ease of use. https://github.com/dimitri/el-get/blob/master/recipes/evil.rcp https://github.com/dimitri/el-get/blob/master/recipes/evil.r... One last note: You may find that el-get lowers the barrier for contributing to libraries. If you find the odd bug in a mode you use, the source code is always checked out in ~/.emacs.d/el-get and it would be practically criminal to not fix it. With package.el, you have to reinstall the library first.
        technomancy 15y ago
        > Personally, I find el-get recipes so easy to install and create that I never use package.el at all, but that isn't the goal of el-get developers. That's my main objection. If you write an el-get recipe, it benefits el-get users. If you use package.el, all users (of Emacs 24+) benefit.
vdm 15y ago
+1. el-get is the homebrew of Emacs, and is even better for letting you hook in to do custom init.

by nyellin 15y ago

justinhj 15y ago

I use package.el Any advantage to swapping to el-get?

nyellin 15y ago
Yes, package.el doesn't install arbitrary snippets from anywhere on the internet.
- technomancy 15y ago
  It takes about five minutes to take a library that isn't packaged and publish it on Marmalade, and then anyone can depend upon it. el-get made lots of sense back in the day when package.el only supported tromey.com, but now that there's a community repository I don't see the point.
  - nyellin 15y ago
    OK. My old complaints against package.el were as follows: 1. Packages need to be updated manually by maintainers. I can't use package.el to install the master branch of my favorite project on GitHub, or an old snippet on EmacsWiki. 2. Marmalade (the community repository) has licensing requirements for package inclusion. Are those two assumptions incorrect?
    - technomancy 15y ago
      > 1. Packages need to be updated manually by maintainers. Yes, but considering uploading new versions can be done with M-x marmalade-upload-buffer, generally Marmalade encourages short release cycles. So there's not much reason to ever work from master unless you're hacking on it yourself, in which case you already have it checked out. > 2. Marmalade (the community repository) has licensing requirements for package inclusion. This is not specific to Marmalade since Emacs itself has licensing requirements. Every elisp library is a derivative work of Emacs itself, therefore it must be distributed under the same license. EDIT: Perhaps you're thinking of elpa.gnu.org? That repository requires copyright assignment for libraries to be included, but Marmalade does not.
      - nyellin 15y ago
        OK. I was wrong about licensing requirements. I think you're slightly confused about el-get's purpose: it isn't to replace package.el. el-get supplements package.el and provides options for people who want to run the latest and greatest versions of libraries, or who can't be bothered to monitor the odd elisp snippet and update Marmalade every time it changes. Personally, I find el-get recipes so easy to install and create that I never use package.el at all, but that isn't the goal of el-get developers. Here is an example recipe for el-get. I haven't tried creating uploading anything to Marmalade yet, so I can't compare the ease of use. https://github.com/dimitri/el-get/blob/master/recipes/evil.rcp https://github.com/dimitri/el-get/blob/master/recipes/evil.r... One last note: You may find that el-get lowers the barrier for contributing to libraries. If you find the odd bug in a mode you use, the source code is always checked out in ~/.emacs.d/el-get and it would be practically criminal to not fix it. With package.el, you have to reinstall the library first.
        technomancy 15y ago
        > Personally, I find el-get recipes so easy to install and create that I never use package.el at all, but that isn't the goal of el-get developers. That's my main objection. If you write an el-get recipe, it benefits el-get users. If you use package.el, all users (of Emacs 24+) benefit.

vdm 15y ago

+1. el-get is the homebrew of Emacs, and is even better for letting you hook in to do custom init.