Elpaca and Setup.el

[dachlu]

I noticed that you migrated from straight.el to elpaca. I have been contemplating trying elpaca for a while, so I will probably use your usage as a guide, so thank you for that! I was wondering if you have any thoughts on using setup.el in place of use-package? It looks like you've opted to just use elpaca-use-package instead. Do you have any thoughts on elpaca's built-in functionality vs. setup.el?

[d12frosted]

@danielclucas feel free to. But keep in mind that Elpaca is designed for different workflow, so I had to patch/workaround some things. I still find it more pleasant and straightforward (no puns intended), even though there are some quirks.

I was wondering if you have any thoughts on using setup.el in place of use-package?

What is setup.el? I think I've heard about it, but can't seem to find it now.

Do you have any thoughts on elpaca's built-in functionality vs. setup.el?

Worth mentioning that elpaca is a package manager and not 'package declaration' (e.g. configuration) tool. elpaca-use-package is a very simple wrapper around use-package that just understands elpaca recipes. So at the moment I use elpaca to manage my packages and use-package to configure them. It's a little bit interleaved, hence might be confusing.

BTW, worth mentioning that I would gladly use package.el to manage my packages (e.g. no straight, no elpaca, just the built-in package manager), but it doesn't support non-ELPA installations (e.g. git-hosted packages).

[dachlu]

Elpaca seems more straightforward and less complex by comparison to straight, so that appeals to me. Its author is also an active maintainer of straight, so I believe it was designed with some of the problems of straight in mind.

Here's the link to the wiki article on setup.el https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SetupEl. It's my understanding that setup.el is a package configuration tool in the same vein as use-package. It's less declarative by comparison, and it doesn't do as much out of the box as use-package, but I find the more readable code base appealing (but I'm a novice in macros).

Maybe as a newcomer I just like tools that I can read and sort of understand 😅

[d12frosted]

Here's the link to the wiki article on setup.el https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SetupEl. It's my understanding that setup.el is a package configuration tool in the same vein as use-package. It's less declarative by comparison, and it doesn't do as much out of the box as use-package, but I find the more readable code base appealing (but I'm a novice in macros).

Thanks for the link. Indeed, it looks like they solve pretty much the same problem and it's just a matter of preferences/taste. I guess the main difference is that use-package is more declarative, and this is the reason I like it. But I have never used setup.el, so can't say anything meaningful about it. If you are going to try it, I would appreciate your thoughts.

Maybe as a newcomer I just like tools that I can read and sort of understand 😅

Aye, I totally understand that. Though I wonder, what makes use-package less easy to understand? And I also think that my setup is not the easiest to understand as well 😅

[dachlu]

If you are going to try it, I would appreciate your thoughts.

I will indeed let you know once I have some experience with it!

Aye, I totally understand that. Though I wonder, what makes use-package less easy to understand? And I also think that my setup is not the easiest to understand as well sweat_smile

Ah, well using use-package is straightforward enough, but I have difficulty understanding its internal workings. Setup.el is still difficult for me to understand fully, but I find the codebase a bit more accessible is all. In either case It would probably help if I better understood macros.

[dachlu]

Hi, I just recently tried to migrate over to elpaca. I based my configuration on how you did it, but I'm running into an error that I'm not sure how to diagnose. When using eldev build :autoloads for the first time it seems to build and compile elpaca successfully, but none of the other packages. Here is the output:
build-output.txt
Which is followed by

Error (use-package): Cannot load <package>
...
Unknown virtual target ':autoloads'

Once this has been done, subsequent attempts at eldev build :autoloads or eldev compile both just output

waiting for installation to complete...

and never complete. Here's a link to my config: https://github.com/Cloudcolour/flux-emacs.

I've probably made some silly error, but I can't seem to figure where I've gone wrong at the moment. I would really appreciate it if you could take a look!

[dachlu]

I was able to resolve the issues I was having with a deep dive into how Eldev and Elpaca work. I hope my request for help wasn't too much of an annoyance!

Though I do have one lingering question, which is the need for elpa-block-until-ready. You state in the docstring:

  "Block Emacs until all packages are installed.
Unfortunately, `elpaca' is asynchronous-only, but there are
flows (like scripts using `init'), where you need to do perform
some actions *when* environment is ready."

Can you provide an example of what sort of script you mean, or of another flow that would require blocking? I don't think I need to use such a function currently, but I would like to understand what problem that solves.

Thanks again for all of your resources and code.

[d12frosted]

@Cloudcolour apologies for silence. Overly busy and crazy days. Will try to answer this week :)