I installed dired+ through list-packages (the folder was put in the elpa folder), and put '(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/elpa/")' in my init file (which I created myself), and '(require 'dired+) under. When I open emacs, I get an error telling me there's an error in my init file. If I remove the '(require 'dired+) line, the error stops, but again dired+ doesn't work when I call dired mode. The actual folder that was downloaded when I installed it is 'dired+-20130206.1702'. So I tried '(require dired+-20130206.1702), which again gave me an error on startup.
I'm at my wits end. I've tried everything I can think of, gone through the GNU emacs docs, googled the problem, looked at the answers here at Stack, and no luck. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm using Windows XP.
It's impossible to say for certain without seeing all the code, but you appear to be quoting your forms for no reason.
i.e., these:
'(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/elpa/")
'(require 'dired+)
should be:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/elpa/")
(require 'dired+)
However that should just make them ineffectual, rather than causing errors directly.
Show us the code and the error message.
Edit:
Adding the /dired+/ to the end seemed to fix it ... Although I have no idea why. Any thoughts?
load-path holds a list of directories in which Emacs will look for libraries. It does not automatically descend into sub-directories, so you need to specify all relevant directories for your libraries. Your dired+ library is clearly in the ~/.emacs.d/elpa/dired+/ directory.
For menubarplus, you will similarly need to check to see which directory the library is in.
To be honest, I had thought that the package management in Emacs 24 would take care of this automatically; but as I've not been using it, I'm not certain.
Edit 2:
Yes, I suspect you have some other problem here. I just experimented with installing a library via the package manager (albeit from the default package repository, which doesn't include a dired+ package), and after restarting Emacs load-path contained the path for the new library without any intervention on my part.
I think Phils answered your question wrt loading Dired+ (specify the right directory, the one where you put dired+.el).
Wrt Menu-bar+, the feature name is menu-bar+, not menubarplus and not menu-barplus. So change your (require 'menubarplus) to (require 'menu-bar+).
Related
Update
Apparently, the auto-complete package is not the culprit.
Emacs fails to download melpa archive.
A quick google search indicates that this is a reappearing problem both on windows and unix machines.
As there are already threads concerning failed to download 'melpa' archive (none of which helped unfortunately) this thread may or may not be closed.
Inital Question
I'm trying to set up emacs for Common Lisp.
I installed sbcl and the slime package.
Some time ago I used to have auto completion for Common Lisp keywords in emacs such that - while typing - it suggested a word via a greyed out completion (TAB for acceptance) or via drop down or both. (I can't remember exactly.)
I'm struggling to get this working again.
At https://github.com/purcell/ac-slime it is suggested to first install auto-complete but when I type package-list-packages there is no such package. (But there are plenty named auto-complete-*).
(I set up Melpa with:
(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
'("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/")))
The provided link http://cx4a.org/software/auto-complete/ is dead as well.M-x install-package [RET] auto-complete [RET] also fails. Emacs says: [No match]
So my question is:
If there is no auto-complete package anymore, what is a good way to set up Common Lisp auto completion in emacs in the way mentioned above (greyed out word or dropdown)?
The current home-page for auto-complete is https://github.com/auto-complete/auto-complete
Installing it should be enough to allow you to use ac-slime (there is also a completion version using company).
Here is how I got it to work.
Download the .ZIP archive with repository here.
Unzip
Run M-x package-install-file
On the prompt, specify the path to the downloaded repository and the file named auto-complete.el.
Make sure that installation returns something along the lines of "Successful"
Add this line to your Emacs initialization file (.emacs):
(ac-config-default)
To auto-complete in SLIME, follow similar step to install ac-slime (requires SLIME and Auto-complete)
P.S. There is another package called company (stands for Complete Anything), which is quite good as an alternative. I am trying it out now. Getting it to work was very simple.
So I downloaded an .el file, I put it on the ~/.emacs.d/elpa/ folder, but it won't appear on the M-x list-packages. How do I make it appear there or how can I install this file/package?
There are two ways of installing an Emacs package: either type M-x list-packages and install it from the list, letting Emacs download it for you, or download the package yourself and install it with M-x package-install-file.
Installing from a package archive
In the first case, note that there are several different package archives. The default value for the variable package-archives only contains GNU ELPA, but most people want to add MELPA to that list since it has more packages. To do that, you need to add the following to your .emacs file (copied from the MELPA web page):
(require 'package) ;; You might already have this line
(add-to-list 'package-archives
'("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
(when (< emacs-major-version 24)
;; For important compatibility libraries like cl-lib
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")))
(package-initialize) ;; You might already have this line
After that, typing M-x list-packages should list more packages than you'll ever need :)
Installing from a downloaded file
There are two types of packages: single-file packages and multi-file packages. The former can be downloaded as a single .el file, while the latter are distributed as tarballs (.tar). Both types can be installed with M-x package-install-file.
Note that not every .el file can be installed as a package. The comments at the beginning of the file need to follow a certain convention, documented in the Simple packages node of the Emacs Lisp reference manual.
That leaves the possibility that the .el file you've downloaded is not installable as a package. In that case, you should put it in some other directory (~/.emacs.d/elpa is meant for installed packages only), add that directory to the load-path variable, and require the package. If you have foo.el and put it in ~/path/to/foo, it would look something like this:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/path/to/foo")
(require 'foo)
An .el file is not a package. Installing it via ELPA is probably vastly preferrable to manually downloading a static .el file; perhaps the maintainer has a home page with ELPA (or Marmalade, etc) instructions.
In particular, a package will receive updates as they are made available, so you will not be forever stuck on an increasingly obsolete, unmanaged version (though quiet, fully automatic updates are not yet available or feasible, AFAICT).
But if you have to get by with just the file you already downloaded, you can put it pretty much anywhere you like, as long as that directory is included in the load-path. Manually mucking with the elpa directory is a bad idea, though; put it somewhere else.
Look for comments near the top of the file for any additional instructions; any autoloads, for example, will probably have to be configured separately, and usually completely manually.
This used to be how you always did things in older versions of Emacs, so you should find that the Internet is still practically bulging with guides and tutorials which explain the finer details of this mechanism, if this answer alone isn't sufficient.
I have just upgraded org-mode to the latest available in ELPA. According to the official documentation, the installation has to be done in fresh emacs session where no org-related scripts/files have been loaded. The installation is successful, and org-version reports that I have updated to 8.2.6 (from 7.9.3f). However, as soon as I put back my old org-related scripts, and reload emacs, I'd get 7.9.3f when I run org-version. To track what's causing it I retrace my steps by adding my org-related scripts one by one. I found out that when I add back (require 'org-publish), the version downgrades to the built-in one. I don't know why this is happening.
The problem was primarily due to the way my emacs initializes (initialization script).
In the latest version of org (8.2.6 at the time of writing), org-publish is now ox-publish, so I needed to call (require 'ox-publish') instead. I think calling org-publish or any older version modules causes the confusion in the setup.
However, after changing the reference, I got an error about ox-publish not being found.
To trace the problem further, I removed all org-related scripts from my init.el (that's how I named my initialization script), and run emacs again. When I ran org-version that time, I saw that it's 8.2.6.
To check if ox-publish is getting loaded, I used the scratch buffer, and executed (require 'ox-publish') manually; it returned fine, confirming that the module was actually loaded. This means that ox-publish is only getting loaded after initialization.
My first work around was to load my org publishing script after initialization using the after-init-hook:
(add-hook 'after-init-hook (lambda() (load-file "/path/to/org-publish-project.el")))
That solved the problem, and I could see my org installation upgraded correctly. However, I didn't feel good about loading the script through after-init-hook. Some people in the official orgmode mailing list suggested that I should check if I'm calling (package-initialize) in my init.el. I didn't. The operation loads the packages installed through the package manager. If it's not specified in the init script, it will be called after initialization by default. Learning that, I added a call to (package-initialize) somewhere at the beginning of my init.el. Afterwards, I called load-file to my org publishing script directly.
(load-file "/path/to/org-publish-project.el")
I've installed a few packages from elpa and melpa. Some packages don't really require that I edit my .emacs file to add any hooks or include a (require 'fn) line. On the other hand some packages provide instructions that explain editing the .emacs file is part of the installation. I recently installed ace-jump-mode and the packaging system created a directory for the package in .emacs.d something like: ace-jump-mode-20130719.2053/ and the instructions for installation call for adding a few lines to my .emacs file.
So there are 2 parts to this question.
when is editing .emacs file required after installing a package?
Adding that path to ace-jump seems like it will break if ever I need to update the package, is there a better way of including the path in my .emacs file?
Different packages handle key bindings and loading differently. Sometimes you'll have to modify your configuration, and sometimes you won't. The best bet is to read the documentation for each thing you install, which you appear to already be doing.
You shouldn't have to explicitly specify the path to your ace-jump package. ELPA / package.el will take care of updating your load-path. The following snippet should work, without specifying that path manually:
;; No (add-to-list 'load-path ...)
(require 'ace-jump-mode)
;; Optional
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c SPC") 'ace-jump-mode)
I'm currently trying to get dirtree for Emacs working. I'm unfamiliar with configuration files and I'm having trouble getting it to work. Currently I have dirtree.el, along with the other required files, inside of my .emacs.d directory, and I've added the following lines to my .emacs file.
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/")
(autoload 'dirtree "dirtree" "Add directory to tree view")
I don't get any errors when I open Emacs, but when I type M-x dirtree, I get a message saying there is no match. Can anyone see what I'm missing in order to get this to work correctly?
The dirtree that I'm using can be found at: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/dirtree.el
The error is in the autoload declaration suggested by the library. It does not include the interactive flag to tell Emacs that it is a command (interactive function), and only commands may be invoked via M-x.
The corrected declaration is:
(autoload 'dirtree "dirtree" "Add directory to tree view" t)
I've tried to load it on my machine. It seems that dirtree requires a second module called tree-mode (which I don't have installed). Did you install that one too? If not, you may have the same error.
By the way, you shouldn't have to add ~/.emacs.d to your load path; I'm reasonably sure it's there by default.