Re: [O] The Org Package

[Achim Gratz]

David Masterson writes:
> I still need more understanding of the Emacs packaging system.

That's a question you better ask of the Emacs developers, after you've
read the documentation.

> Something doesn't seem right and I'm sure I'm missing some key in
> understanding how its supposed to work.  What I see right now seems like
> something doesn't match up -- particularly with the Org package:
>
> 1. Most modern Emacs have Org pre-installed.
> 2. Unfortunately, that Org is not up-to-date (24.3 has 7.9.3f).
> 3. Therefore, installing the latest Org package seems natural.

The pitfall here is that you _must_ do the first install of the Org
package from an Emacs that didn't load any part of the built-in Org.

> 4. However, this does not uninstall the built-in Org package.

No, the built-in "package" unfortunately isn't really a package.  It's
still inextricably built-in the same way it ever was, just that it now
additionally shows up in package manager as built-in package.

> 5. Packages are not initialized until after .emacs is run.

You should add (package-initialize) to your .emacs, but read

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Package-Installation.html

before doing that so you'll understand where to put it.

> 6. Therefore, any of the latest variables are not defined yet.
> 7. Therefore, setting a hook may not do what you think.
> 8. The documentation for Org suggests hooks (etc.) to set.
> 9. I've run into times when org-version was still 7.9.3f.
>
> Do you see where I'm heading?  Does anyone else run into this problem?
>
> Or do most people ignore the Org package and install the latest from
> GitHub in a more manual process (a la Bernt Hansen's paper)?  Do we need
> more concrete documentation on setting up the Org Package?

See above.  The package system in Emacs isn't really designed for
something as big and complicated as Org and its interaction with
built-in packages has room for improvement; but you can make it work,
even for Org.

Whether you want to install Org from Git is another story and you should
mainly decide from whether you need to always run the very latest
development version.  If that decision rather falls to "I always want
the latest released version", then the ELPA package is a better choice,
IMHO.


Regards,
Achim.
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