Re: "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Steven Buczkowski <steven.buczkowski@gmail.com> wrote:

> Morning everyone,
> 
> I tried updating orgmode through apt-get last night but found M-x
> org-version reporting 6.36c not one of the more recent versions so I
> reinstalled by hand this morning from the 7.8.06 tar archive at
> orgmode.org. Both installations seemed to run without incident but, now,
> when I try to activate a capture task, I get the following error:
> "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"
> 

Yup: apt-get will get you an ancient org-mode release.

You probably ended up with a "frankenstein" org-mode install with bits
and pieces coming from various places: I'd suggest doing "apt-get remove
org-mode" to get rid of the ancient version and then reinstalling from
the tar file - or, perhaps even better, the git repository: most of us
have found that staying on the bleeding edge is a rewarding experience
(even if an occasionally bloody :-) one - but that happens only
rarely). And even if you run into trouble, with git it is easy to
backtrack and use an official release.  Make sure to follow to the
letter the installation instructions in the manual in these cases.

In some cases at least

M-x locate-library RET

will help you find org-mode files in strange places. Also check
the value of load-path carefully. And make sure that you restart
emacs after changes, in order to make sure that you don't have
stale configurations hanging around.

Nick