document support for other ELPA-like package archives

[aspiers]

The user manual doesn't mention Marmalade or MELPA. My system has ~/.emacs.d/el-get/el-get/recipes/elpa/melpa.rcp but I can't figure out where it came from or what it does.

[aspiers]

This is similar to #1123, so clearly I am not the only one slightly confused by this ;-) My gut feeling is that el-get shouldn't alter package-archives without the user's permission, since other code outside el-get depends on it, and the expectation has already been set that it is customizable via M-x customize.

[dimitri]

I think you're right and we should be hijacking package-archives in the package.rcp recipe. Will accept a patch for that.

[aspiers]

Sorry for the delay - just coming back to this. I would love to be able to provide a patch, but I can't because I have no idea how el-get is supposed to work with ELPA-like archives. Ideally I would be able to configure el-get to install a package from (say) MELPA or Marmalade, if there is no native el-get recipe for that package. Is that possible, and if so, how? I think it's really important that the user manual explains this in a way which doesn't require in depth knowledge of any of these approaches to packaging.

[ghost]

I can't help you for patching this. But if you need to install, via el-get, a package from a specific ELPA repo you can use a recipe which look like this:

(:name solarized-theme
       :type elpa
       :repo ("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/")
       :post-init (add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path
                                     default-directory))

[aspiers]

@korthaerd Thanks a lot for the info! What's the post-init required for?

[ghost]

@aspiers It's only for this recipe. You need at least the name, type and repo lines for a recipe from elpa.

[aspiers]

Ah, I see. Thanks!!

[yyr]

I think el-get also should not add all the archives by default. Preferably we should have customizable variable.

we should be hijacking package-archives in the package.rcp recipe.

@dimitri could you be specific what you mean here.?

Thanks

[npostavs]

we should be hijacking package-archives in the package.rcp recipe.

@dimitri could you be specific what you mean here.?

I think "we should not be hijacking package-archives..." was meant (where "hijack" refers to the setq destroying previous value of package-archives). Also discussed in #799.

[dimitri]

Yeah that was a typo.

[egbulmer]

If you specify the :repo manually and it is not one of the default archives used by el-get then M-x el-get-update <package-name> RET will fail with Wrong type argument: arrayp, nil because it cannot find the associated package name in the archive-contents file.

I encountered this when trying to use el-get to retrieve the bind-key package on MELPA:

(:name bind-key :type elpa
 :repo ("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/"))

Is there way of adding an archive to this default list used by el-get? Is MELPA compatible with el-get?

[egbulmer]

Discovered that this was actually just happening because of the package.rcp :post-init logic that overwrites package-archives which was mentioned above. My workaround is to add a post-step to my el-get-sources list that directly follows package.el:

    ; ...
    (:name package)
    (:name extra-package-archives :type no-op
     :post-init (progn
                  ; add additional package archives here!
                  (add-to-list 'package-archives melpa-archive t)))
    ; ...

[aspiers]

@sonelliot Is your el-get installation out of date? As far as I know this was already fixed a month ago by 40970c4 from #1455 (see also #799).

el-get can certainly work alongside MELPA (at least, since the above fix was merged). Here's how I do it:

https://gist.github.com/aspiers/8332731

followed by:

(require 'as-elpa)
(unless (file-exists-p (concat el-get-el-get-dir "/recipes/elpa"))
  (el-get-elpa-build-local-recipes))

[antonio]

@aspiers 40970c4 is certainly not working for me, package-archives gets overwritten. What worked for me was to create an init-package.el file and setting the variable there.

I am not an Emacs user so it might be my fault anyway.

[antonio]

Dismiss the previous comment. I deleted the el-get folder and reinstalled from scratch and is working fine 👍

[egbulmer]

@aspiers: You were right. I was using the stable, not master version, of el-get. I'm up-to-date now and problem solved! Cheers for the help.

[aspiers]

Excellent :)

[aspiers]

@dimitri I don't think this should have been closed, because there is still not any real documentation for how to use MELPA etc.

[dimitri]

And I should really dispose of the idea of a stable branch, too.

[aspiers]

Thanks :)

[dimitri]

Done, current version is 5.1 and meant to be a rolling release. The installer defaults to the "master" branch. I didn't remove the installer code around the el-get-master idea to avoid breaking existing installation in a useless way, but I think it could be done.