Re: package-install-selected-packages and newer versions

[Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org>]

Jarmo Hurri <jarmo.hurri@iki.fi> writes:

Hi Jarmo,

> I was trying to use the nice variable package-selected-packages and
> the associated function package-install-selected-packages to automate
> package installation on my multiple systems.

You might also be interested in use-package which is part of emacs since
29.1 (which, of course, isn't released, yet).  I use that in my ~/.emacs
for all external packages and can just copy my ~/.emacs to some new
machine and the first start will install all required packages.
Example:

(use-package markdown-mode
  :ensure t
  :mode "\\.md\\'"
  :custom
  (markdown-command "cmark --unsafe"))

The :ensure t makes sure the package will be installed if it isn't yet.

> I ran into a problem because package-install-selected-packages does
> not check whether a newer version of a package is available.
> [...]
> Would it be desirable to add an option to install a newer version if
> one is available?

In emacs 29.1, there's a new package-upgrade-all command which basically
solves that issue.

Bye,
Tassilo