Re: Dealing with a system Emacs properly

[David Masterson]

Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com> writes:

> David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I recently upgraded Linux on my Chromebook to Debian 12.5
>> (bookworm), This included upgrading Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 in the
>> installation of Debian.  I have been installing packages for Emacs
>> from (M)Elpa into my ~/.emacs.d/elpa directory.  Recently, I noticed
>> that Org was at v9.5.5 whereas the latest one was 9.7.6 in
>> list-packages.
>
> Are you saying a "personal" installation of Org was
> discarded/downgraded/ignored when you upgraded Emacs, or are you
> saying that an upgrade using, say, "package-upgrade-all" did not
> upgrade Org?

I have the package auto-package-update which regularly checks my
packages for updates on [M]Elpa. I had package-install(ed) Org ~v8.0 and
this package had been regularly updating it.  Along the way, I found my
local Org had a conflict with the system installed Org and I think I
removed the system Org (in Emacs 27.1) to get around that.  When I
upgraded Debian to get Emacs 28.2, I think something similar happened.
I didn't notice until I saw a few "org-*.signed" files in my elpa dir
with no corresponding dir suggesting that auto-package-update had tried
and failed to update Org, but, if there were warnings/errors, I ignored
them among other package updates because it was usually ok to do
that. Perhaps package

> The latter is normal behaviour for builtin packages...

Latter?  I don't see package-upgrade-all in describe-function.  

>       By contrast, ‘package-upgrade’ and ‘package-upgrade-all’ never
>       consider built-in packages.  If you want to use these commands
>       for upgrading some built-in packages, you need to upgrade each
>       of those packages, once, either via ‘C-u M-x package-install
>       <RET>’, or by customizing ‘package-install-upgrade-built-in’ to
>       a non-‘nil’ value, and then upgrading the package once via the
>       package menu or by ‘package-install’.

Hmm. I don't think that will work because the system package is not in a
versioned directory.  Also, you'd have to run Emacs under sudo.

> But if it's the former, do you have some aspect of your package
> management customised? A package quickstart or load list?

I use use-package to load all the interesting packages.  I'm trying to
bulletproof my .emacs so that I can use it on multiple systems and have
all the packages loaded as necessary, WIP

>> Is there a recommended method of installing Elpa packages (like Org)
>> into my home directory such that they properly override the Debian
>> system package? Am I supposed to remove by hand the system package?
>
> No, that should not be necessary. A vanilla package install should
> shadow a builtin.

Okay, by shadow you mean cover.  Most of the time, that's true.  Once in
awhile, there's some problem.

-- 
David Masterson