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Re: Multiple versions of Org in load-path problem


From: David Masterson
Subject: Re: Multiple versions of Org in load-path problem
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2022 21:00:44 -0800
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.1 (gnu/linux)

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> "Michel Schinz" <michel@schi.nz> writes:
>>
>>> Just for the record, I also ran into problems when installing Org 9.6
>>> using Emacs' package system on top of an older version that came with
>>> Emacs. If I tried to install it as usual (M-x list-packages, then
>>> install the package from there), I had errors during compilation related
>>> to `org-assert-version`, and then if I restarted Emacs, I would get a
>>> fatal error in an unrelated package.
>>>
>>> I managed to solve that problem by:
>>> 1. uninstalling Org 9.6 and exiting Emacs,
>>> 2. starting Emacs with -q,
>>> 3. installing Org 9.6 from there (using M-x list-packages as usual),
>>> 4. restarting Emacs.
>>
>> Interesting!  I tried this (essentially) and it worked for my case.  In
>> my case, I had a built-in Org-9.3 and I was trying to use list-packages
>> to install Org-9.6. I checked that using -q still added Org-9.3 to
>> the
>> load-path, but, since Org wasn't loaded, the install via list-packages
>> worked.
>>
>> The question is what's the proper way of doing this without '-q'?

[...]

> I don't think there is any safe way to install an updated version of
> org-mode other than
>
> 1. Use the -q approach outlined above

Thinking about it, this only works if Org is in elpa as melpa (etc.) are
not added to package-archives.  You'd have to do some handwritten elisp
out of *scratch* to setup package-archives if Org-9.6 was still coming
out of melpa. That's why this can only be labeled as a hack and not a
solution.

> 2. Craft your init.el file such that org functionality is only loaded
> when explicitly requested and always update as the first action after
> starting emacs.

In this case, something happened in package-install when trying to
install Org-9.6 with a built-in Org-9.3.  During the compilation check
(.el -> .elc) many files failed because the new 'org-assert-version'
macro was not defined.  Sort of like, after package-install started
working on Org-9.6, org-macs.el (where org-assert-version should be) got
loaded *before* the new load-path had been set causing it to load the
old one from 9.3.  Thereafter, everything went awry. 

> The first approach is actually the easiest. The second is hard to get
> right and very fragile because packages like use-package and more
> specifically, other packages with leverage off org functionality, make it
> impossible to reliably know exactly when org is loaded.

Using ':after" in use-package is supposed to help that, but I'm not sure
it is reliable.  Packages are often incomplete about what other packages
it depends on.

> An approach used by many 'canned' distributions is to postpone package
> updates. You have a function you run to check for updates which
> generates a list of packages to update and writes that list to a
> file. Each time emacs is started, it looks for this update list and if
> it finds it, it installs packages updates at the very beginning of the
> init process (before any of your other init.el code or custom
> blocks). The process also looks for org in the list of packages to
> update and if it is found, updates it first. 

Probably doesn't work in this case as you would need to be able to use
package.el suggesting that the load-path has been updated for all
built-ins already.  The thing I note is that the load-path has already
been updated for built-ins at the beginning of
'~/.emacs.d/early-init.el', but the libraries haven't been loaded yet
(unless needed). That's okay if the newer version of a package then
cleanly replaces all the files in the old version.

> I don't think there is a safe way to load org mode after the init
> process i.e. after booting emacs by M-x package-update.

Where is package-update called in the boot process of emacs?  I don't
see package-update in Emacs v2.7.

> I've had good success using straight.el. I had to be careful regarding
> how I structured my init.el file (ensuring any straight stuff happens
> first and the first use package stanza is for org. The main reason
> straight works well for me is that my work flow is to do a M-x
> straight-pull-all when I want to update my packages. This does a git
> pull for all the sources, but does not do any build/install. This occurs
> when I next start Emacs and because I have all the straight stuff at the
> start and because org mode is the first straight-use-package, the update
> and install happens before any other org functionality is loaded,
> avoiding mixed version issues.

Where do you get straight.el?  I don't see it in [m]elpa.

-- 
David Masterson



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