Re: What exactly does "installing a package" mean?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-10-26, at 22:31, Kevin W. van Rooijen <kevin.van.rooijen@attichacker.com> wrote:

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> Hi Marcin,
>
> Installing a package /usually/ refers to installing a package through
> the Emacs built in package manager.
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InstallingPackages
>
> These packages get installed in the 'package-user-dir', you yourself
> should not have to manually modify any contents in that directory.
> If you want to try and clean up your package management I suggest
> taking a look at
> use-package https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package
> and Melpa https://github.com/milkypostman/melpa
>
> Installing a package manually would mean adding the path to your package
> to our load-path, and then require it manually. Though looking into
> Emacs' built-in package manager is worth the effort.
>
> So instead of removing them from your package-user-dir manually, try adding the
> packages you need through use-package and let your Emacs configurations
> handle it for you.

Thanks, but you misunderstood me.  What I was asking about was
a particular /implementation detail/ of Emacs' package manager.

I've already added some packages - in fact, I'm afraid too many of them,
from too many repositories - and I want to clean the mess.  However,
that mess is currently working, and if something goes wrong with the
cleaning, I want to be able to quickly recover.  Doing manual
manipulations in `package-user-dir' seems the easiest way.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University