use-package instructions

[al3xandru]

Hi,

Firstly thanks for creating these projects. I am a newbie Emacs user and feature discoverabiltiy is very useful for me. I've also experimented with transient and I know it takes time to come up with something that makes sense.

I have looked at the installation instruction. As a newbie, I got some questions:

(require 'casual-suite)
(use-package casual-calc
  :ensure t
  :bind (:map calc-mode-map ("C-o" . casual-calc-tmenu)))

The casual-suite has to come from somewhere as it is not available locally.

So I think, it should start like:

(use-package casual-suite
  :ensure t)

Then as casual-calc is placed after the (require 'casual-suite),
I suppose the idea is to load it after casual-suite.
Thus I'm thinking:

(use-package casual-calc
  :after casual-suite
  ...)

Similarly for the other ones requiring re-builder, ibuffer, etc.

What do you think?

[kickingvegas]

@al3xandru Thanks for sharing this. First off, let me confess that until this morning, I had a half-baked understanding of how use-package works, as I’ve largely avoided using it and instead explicitly declared require for packages. Then I finally watched Protesilaos Stavrou’s video on use-package and with that information I can hopefully answer your questions.

Some observations:

• The primary design intent of use-package is to load and configure packages.
• It can also be used to install packages with :ensure t, delegating by default the installation to package.el.
• The primary design intent of casual-suite is to be an umbrella installation package for all the Casual porcelains.
  • Installing casual-suite will trigger the installation of all the Casual porcelains defined in it.
  • The porcelains themselves have no dependent functionality on casual-suite.
• Because use-package co-mingles configuration with installation, it can create confusion as evidenced by this conversation.

There’s a couple of scenarios I can see the user go through which I’ll enumerate below.

User explicitly installs casual-suite via package-list

In this scenario, all Casual porcelains are already installed. There is no need to invoke (require 'casual-suite). Each individual porcelain can be configured using use-package. The setting :ensure t is effectively a nop.

User uses use-package to install casual-suite

In this scenario, if the user elects to use use-package :ensure t to install casual-suite then that is all it does. None of the Casual porcelains have any functional dependency on casual-suite, so use-package to configure any porcelain has no dependency on casual-suite.

This scenario seems the most problematic as ordering between installation (particularly of dependent packages) and loading is co-mingled. Also as casual-suite pulls in all the porcelains (effectively being a G-d library), it violates the design intent of use-package to facilitate lazy loading. I would avoid it.

User sets :ensure t in use-package for any porcelain

In doing this, the need for invoking use-package casual-suite is obviated. Users who elect to do this don’t need to install casual-suite.

Note that in any of the scenarios above, use-package as of Emacs 29 will not auto-update a previously installed package. Apparently Emacs 30 will introduce a :vc keyword which will enable auto-updating.

Hopefully this provides some clarification. Upon reflection, casual-suite is really just a convenience package to install all the porcelains and should not be pushed to do more as suggested in #19 if it really wants to play nice with use-package.

[kickingvegas]

@al3xandru I've recently updated the README.org file with revised instructions for using use-package. Please give it a try and provide feedback.

https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual-suite

[al3xandru]

@kickingvegas

Thanks for clarifying the relationship between the individual casual(s) and casual-suite.

At a quick glance the updated readme looks like the snippet I have used myself (with the exception of the extras I had in there for casual-suite). I'm removing those now and retrying.

[kickingvegas]

Let me know how this works out. Thanks!

[al3xandru]

I have ended up with with the following:

(use-package casual-dired
  :bind (:map dired-mode-map ("C-o" . casual-dired-tmenu)))

(use-package casual-bookmarks
  :after (bookmark)
  :bind (:map bookmark-bmenu-mode-map
              ("C-o" . casual-bookmarks-tmenu)
              ("S" . casual-bookmarks-sortby-tmenu)
              ("J" . bookmark-jump)))

(use-package casual-isearch
  :bind (:map isearch-mode-map ("C-o" . casual-isearch-tmenu)))

(use-package casual-ibuffer
  :after (ibuffer)
  :bind (:map ibuffer-mode-map
             ...))

I am not including :ensure t as I have (setq use-package-always-ensure t).

If I'd use casual-suite, I would something similar but:

1. only have casual-suite be :ensure t
2. have all the individual packages:
   • come :after (casual-suite)
   • marked as :ensure nil