Re: Melpa failure :-(

[Alexis]

gnuist006@gmail.com writes:

> A related question. If you are using MELPA or QUELPA and dont 
> want the conflict with the existing packet manager database (apt 
> etc.) what do you do and how do you script your packages to see 
> if they are installed and if not then install and if installed 
> then upgrade etc.

i avoid this problem entirely by simply not using the various 
Emacs packages provided by my distro (Debian); instead, i compile 
the latest stable Emacs release from source. Once the appropriate 
toolchain is installed (a one-time cost), the entire procedure of:

   $ tar xvf emacs-24.5.tar.xz
   $ cd emacs-24.5
   $ ./configure
   $ make
   $ make install

takes about 5 minutes on my i5-2410M / 2.3GHz laptop. i then use 
the GNU ELPA and MELPA archives to install and upgrade packages 
for Emacs, without needing to deal with the possibly outdated / 
less featureful / more buggy versions of packages for Emacs as 
provided by the distro.

Usually i very much prefer to install software from Debian repos, 
but Emacs is a central part of my computing - i not only use it 
for programming and sysadmin, but also for email (via mu4e), note- 
and data-keeping (via Org), chat (IM via ERC), etc. So making an 
exception for Emacs, and compiling and installing new stable 
releases as they come out, has a high benefit/cost ratio for 
me. :-)


Alexis.