Solved: ac-nrepl installed via package.el doesn't work because `cider-0.1' is unavailable

[Deleted user]

Putting this here for future users who hit the same issue.

If you see the following on emacs startup.

Warning (emacs): Unable to activate package `ac-nrepl'.
Required package `cider-0.1' is unavailable

and ac-nrepl does not work after following the setup instructions, you
might have a broken package.el lying about (if you've upgraded from emacs 23
to emacs 24 and have stuff lying around ~/.emacs.d)


an updated package.el is bundled in emacs 24, try locating and removing
stale copies of it in ~/.emacs.d and restarting emacs.

[purcell]

Thanks for posting this. It would have to have been a very old package.el from tromey.com, since the most widely-used package.el for Emacs 23 has long been the one linked to from Marmalade etc., which shouldn't produce the above error.

-Steve

[Deleted user]

You're right it was a different issues, if cider isn't installed via package.el
it needs to be require'd prior to packages that depend on it and are loaded via
package-initialize.
since cider itself depends on several packages it gets tiresome. Installing via package-install
and then updating the load-path with a local repo clone seems to do the trick.