Switching to Cask

This is a repost of a blog post originally published on 2018-01-12 on an abandoned blog of mine. The repost is part of my old blog recovery project. It might contain outdated information, and I will very likely lack any context to help with questions about it. I might not even use mentioned software anymore.


post URL	https://nobbz.gitlab.io/2018/01/12-cask.html
source	https://gitlab.com/NobbZ/nobbz.gitlab.io/-/blob/master/articles/2018/01/12-cask.org?plain=1

Today I’ve decided to switch to cask to manage my dependencies instead of doing all the hardwork myself. The process was pretty easy so far, but its not fully finished yet.

I deleted all the vendored stuff first. Then I created a Cask-file in the repository.

It starts with a short package description, which I placed there just to have it in place for the case I need it. Then I specified which package sources should be used.

(source org)
(source melpa-stable)

I left of gnu-elpa on purpos, since I often got outdated stuff from there anyway.

Next is to actually specify the dependencies.

(depends-on "elixir-mode"      "2.3.1")
(depends-on "htmlize"          "1.51")
(depends-on "org-plus-contrib" "9.1.6")
(depends-on "yaml-mode"        "0.0.13")

Also after this I was able to drop a lot of code in the pre-load-file. I do not even need to juggle around with the 'load-path anymore.

(defun blog-load-package (package &optional version)
  (message "Loading '%s" package)
  (require package)
  (message "Finished loading '%s (Version %s)" package (if version (funcall version) "unknown")))

;; Prepare directory variables
(setq base-directory   default-directory)

(org-babel-load-file (concat base-directory "blog/init.org"))

The only reason I left the (blog-load-package) in that file for now, is for historical reasons. I might move around that function in the future.

Now we need to adjust the loading part. It is cut down to this:

(setq blog-dep-alist `((htmlize     :version ,(lambda () htmlize-version))
                       (yaml-mode   :version yaml-mode-version)
                       (elixir-mode :version elixir-mode-version)))

(dolist (package-info blog-dep-alist)
  (let* ((name     (car package-info))
         (props    (cdr package-info))
         (version  (or (plist-get props :version) nil)))
    (blog-load-package name version)))

Thats it.

NobbZ.dev

Switching to Cask