Yum-like emacs package manager?

Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Tory S. Anderson]

Recently I've read various articles complaining about the emacs package manager (packages.el, `list-packages') given the explosion in user contributions to places like MELPA. Sure enough, especially with emacs traditional async incapabilities, loading the package list and searching through it is very cumbersome. 

It seems like a natural solution would be something like apt-get, yum, and YaST, or maybe even cpan or ctan. Clearly much of what those managers do is unnecessary; we aren't dealing with a full OS, as much as we sometimes pretend we are. But in particular they perform search and filtering in powerful and relatively fast ways that would be wonderful to have in emacs.

Does anyone know if there's something along these lines in development right now? 

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[wgreenhouse-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg]

torys.anderson-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org (Tory S. Anderson) writes:

> Recently I've read various articles complaining about the emacs
> package manager (packages.el, `list-packages') given the explosion in
> user contributions to places like MELPA. Sure enough, especially with
> emacs traditional async incapabilities, loading the package list and
> searching through it is very cumbersome.

FWIW, if the complaint is that it's painful to load the package list
from the network every time, `list-packages' doesn't actually force
that. You can pass it the NO-FETCH arg and the list will be read from
the cached local value, e.g. C-u M-x list-packages.

The list can also be filtered by keywords if supplied by the package
author (press f to try it), or by package name or description by using
`occur' on the *Packages* buffer.

--
WGG

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Robert Thorpe]

torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson) writes:

> Recently I've read various articles complaining about the emacs
> package manager (packages.el, `list-packages') given the explosion in
> user contributions to places like MELPA. Sure enough, especially with
> emacs traditional async incapabilities, loading the package list and
> searching through it is very cumbersome. 
>
> It seems like a natural solution would be something like apt-get, yum
> , and YaST, or maybe even cpan or ctan. Clearly much of what those
> managers do is unnecessary; we aren't dealing with a full OS, as much
> as we sometimes pretend we are. But in particular they perform search
> and filtering in powerful and relatively fast ways that would be
> wonderful to have in emacs.
>
> Does anyone know if there's something along these lines in
> development right now? 

I don't know if it is.  I've read some threads on emacs-devel about
speed problems in package.el.

Personally, I think it would be nice to use the already-existing
find-packages interface for the ELPAs too.  That interface has
categories.  It would be much faster because it would only require the
data for one category at a time.  That fact that M-x list-packages lists
everything is an inconvience in most cases.

BR,
Robert Thorpe 

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Artur Malabarba]

> It seems like a natural solution would be something like apt-get, yum,
and YaST, or maybe even cpan or ctan. Clearly much of what those managers
do is unnecessary; we aren't dealing with a full OS, as much as we
sometimes pretend we are. But in particular they perform search and
filtering in powerful and relatively fast ways that would be wonderful to
have in emacs.
>
> Does anyone know if there's something along these lines in development
right now?

You'll have to be more specific. What features do you feel are missing the
most?
Emacs has fantastic searching and filtering capabilities (see occur, for
instance), so I don't see a huge need to add that onto package.el itself.

As for the async stuff, yes that would be nice. The Paradox package
implements asynchronous package operations, if that's what you're looking
for.

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Tory S. Anderson]

Those helps are good to know. However, if the goal is to check for updates to packages you currently have installed, you are still going to be loading for a while. 

wgreenhouse@riseup.net writes:

> torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson) writes:
>
>> Recently I've read various articles complaining about the emacs
>> package manager (packages.el, `list-packages') given the explosion in
>> user contributions to places like MELPA. Sure enough, especially with
>> emacs traditional async incapabilities, loading the package list and
>> searching through it is very cumbersome.
>
> FWIW, if the complaint is that it's painful to load the package list
> from the network every time, `list-packages' doesn't actually force
> that. You can pass it the NO-FETCH arg and the list will be read from
> the cached local value, e.g. C-u M-x list-packages.
>
> The list can also be filtered by keywords if supplied by the package
> author (press f to try it), or by package name or description by using
> `occur' on the *Packages* buffer.
>
> --
> WGG

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Rasmus]

Hi,

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> As for the async stuff, yes that would be nice. The Paradox package
> implements asynchronous package operations, if that's what you're looking
> for.

Out of curiosity: Are you planning to add async to package.el itself?

From the github screenshot the multi-line view also looks like an
improvement that would be nice to have in package.el.

—Rasmus

-- 
And when I’m finished thinking, I have to die a lot

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Tory S. Anderson]

Wow. I'm trying out Paradox now; very nice. 

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

>> It seems like a natural solution would be something like apt-get,
> yum, and YaST, or maybe even cpan or ctan. Clearly much of what those
> managers do is unnecessary; we aren't dealing with a full OS, as much
> as we sometimes pretend we are. But in particular they perform search
> and filtering in powerful and relatively fast ways that would be
> wonderful to have in emacs.
>>
>> Does anyone know if there's something along these lines in
> development right now?
>
> You'll have to be more specific. What features do you feel are
> missing the most?
> Emacs has fantastic searching and filtering capabilities (see occur,
> for instance), so I don't see a huge need to add that onto package.el
> itself.
>
> As for the async stuff, yes that would be nice. The Paradox package
> implements asynchronous package operations, if that's what you're
> looking for.

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Anssi Saari]

torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson) writes:

> Recently I've read various articles complaining about the emacs
> package manager (packages.el, `list-packages') given the explosion in
> user contributions to places like MELPA. Sure enough, especially with
> emacs traditional async incapabilities, loading the package list and
> searching through it is very cumbersome.

I haven't had problems with that but then I have very little experience
with package.el. Last week I installed org-ehtml from melpa but the
installation failed because org-mode was too old (this was on an
otherwise pristine 24.4 installation.) Easily fixed by updating org
first but it seems there's no dependency handling which seems really
rather odd.

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Alexis]

On 2015-02-18T04:33:50+1100, Anssi Saari said:

 AS> I haven't had problems with that but then I have very little 
 AS> experience with package.el. Last week I installed org-ehtml 
 from
 AS> melpa but the installation failed because org-mode was too 
 old
 AS> (this was on an otherwise pristine 24.4 installation.) Easily
 AS> fixed by updating org first but it seems there's no 
 dependency
 AS> handling which seems really rather odd.

There is at least some dependency handling[1], but Org as a 
dependency is a bit trickier than others, as it's a package which 
is under heavy development outside of Emacs core - and many Org 
users follow the bleeding edge - but the version of it bundled 
with Emacs is merely a 'snapshot' of Org development at a 
particular point in the Emacs release cycle.

There have been a few discussions recently on the emacs-devel 
list:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/

about improving the Emacs package system, e.g.:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00967.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00632.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00367.html


Alexis.

[1] E.g. consider the `ac-clang` package on MELPA. In 
`package-list-packages` view, pressing RET on the package name 
will show:

    Requires: emacs-24, cl-lib-0.5, auto-complete-1.4.0, 
    yasnippet-0.8.0

and trying to install it will (in my experience) pull in 
e.g. yasnippet if the latter isn't already installed.

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Artur Malabarba]

That isn't supposed to happen, package.el does do dependency handling.
Looking into it now, it seems that org-ehtml no longer specifies org
as a dependency, so I can't quite test what was going on.

Do let us know if you spot that again.

2015-02-17 15:33 GMT-02:00 Anssi Saari <as@sci.fi>:
> torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson) writes:
>
>> Recently I've read various articles complaining about the emacs
>> package manager (packages.el, `list-packages') given the explosion in
>> user contributions to places like MELPA. Sure enough, especially with
>> emacs traditional async incapabilities, loading the package list and
>> searching through it is very cumbersome.
>
> I haven't had problems with that but then I have very little experience
> with package.el. Last week I installed org-ehtml from melpa but the
> installation failed because org-mode was too old (this was on an
> otherwise pristine 24.4 installation.) Easily fixed by updating org
> first but it seems there's no dependency handling which seems really
> rather odd.

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[W. Greenhouse]

Please note that MELPA is terrible and automatically generates its own
versions which don't correspond to and are not compatible with other
package repos' versioning. MELPA Considered Harmful.

Re: Yum-like emacs package manager?

[Joost Kremers]

W  Greenhouse wrote:
> Please note that MELPA is terrible and automatically generates its own
> versions which don't correspond to and are not compatible with other
> package repos' versioning. MELPA Considered Harmful.

https://github.com/milkypostman/melpa#stable-packages


-- 
Joost Kremers                                   joostkremers@fastmail.fm
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)