On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:25 PM Lawrence Bottorff <borgauf@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm trying a clean install with this in my init.el
>
> (require 'package)
> (add-to-list 'package-archives
>   '("melpa-stable" . "http://melpa-stable.milkbox.net/packages/"))
>

Not related to your question, but this link has been updated. See
https://stable.melpa.org/#/getting-started

(add-to-list 'package-archives
>     '("org" . "http://orgmode.org/elpa/"))
>
> ;; Initialize all the ELPA packages (what is installed using the packages
> commands)
> (package-initialize)
>
> (when (not package-archive-contents)
>   (package-refresh-contents))
>

(package-refresh-contents) should be called every time if you tend to
install package non-interactively i.e. not using M-x list-packages. You
could have non-nil package-archive-contents but that value could be stale.
This could be the problem.


> (defvar my-packages
>   '(;; org mode
>     org
>     ;; org mode plus contrib
>     org-plus-contrib))
>

Also not related to the problem, you do not need both org and
org-plus-contrib. Just org-plus-contrib will suffice. See
http://orgmode.org/elpa.html


> (dolist (p my-packages)
>   (when (not (package-installed-p p))
>     (package-install p)))
>
>
> eval-buffer-ing this gives
>
> package-compute-transaction: Package ‘org-plus-contrib-’ is unavailable
>
> It's as if it's looking for a specific org-plus-contrib-xxxx.tar ? Never
> had this problem before.
>

Call package-refresh-contents unconditionally. That should fix the problem.


> LB
>
-- 

Kaushal Modi