pallet: An Emacs Lisp repository from hectordom

#Pallet Pallet is a package management helper for Emacs.

It uses @rejeep's excellent Cask as a platform to keep track of your installed packages.

##News Version 0.9 introduces support for Cask version and VC references, which will now be retained if specified in your Cask file:

(depends-on "graphene" "20141030.219")
(depends-on "pallet" :git "https://github.com/rdallasgray/pallet" :ref "master")

Many thanks to Sam Brightman for implementing this feature.

Version 0.8 introduces the ;;;pallet-ignore comment, which allows you to tell Pallet to ignore (and retain) text following the comment.

Version 0.7 introduces a significant breaking change: it is now necessary to start pallet-mode for pallet to track your package installs and deletes. See the instructions below.

Version 0.7 introduces a new integration test harness using Servant. This is intended to allow safer and quicker addition of new features going forward.

##Target platform Pallet is currently tested with Emacs versions 24.3 through 24.4.

##Use Pallet has a very simple interface:

M-x pallet-init creates a Cask file using information about installed packages from the package.el system
M-x pallet-install installs packages listed in your Cask file
M-x pallet-update updates installed packages

Pallet's main job, though, is to add and delete package references from your Cask file as you install and delete them using the built-in Emacs package management system. Turn this on by adding (pallet-mode t) to your Emacs init file, or by calling pallet-mode interactively (M-x pallet-mode).

##Installation To install pallet, you should first install Cask, following the instructions here. At present, just install Cask -- don't add anything to your .emacs or init.el file.

After installing Cask, there are two ways you can go, depending on your situation:

I have a working Emacs install, with packages already installed, and can access Melpa.

In this case run M-x list-packages, and install pallet. Then, run M-x pallet-init. Now you have a Cask file in your emacs.d directory which contains listings for all files you've previously installed via package-install. Run M-x pallet-install, and your .emacs.d/elpa directory will be replicated under .emacs.d/.cask/.

You can if you wish now delete your .emacs.d/elpa directory, and remove any lines from your init.el adding archives to package-archive, or running package-initialize.
I have a newly installed Emacs and/or am not set up to access Melpa.

In this case, create a file called Cask in your emacs.d directory. Add the following lines to it:
```
(source melpa)

(depends-on "pallet")
```
Then, in terminal and in your emacs.d directory, run
```
cask install
```
This will create a .cask directory inside your .emacs.d directory, initialize a package directory under .emacs.d/.cask/, and install pallet to it.

Finally, make sure the following lines are in your init.el, before any packages are required:

(require 'cask "<path-to-cask>/cask.el")
(cask-initialize)
(require 'pallet)
(pallet-mode t)

<path-to-cask> will vary depending on how you installed Cask: if you installed via the curl method, it is likely to be ~/.cask; if you installed via Homebrew, it is likely to be /usr/local/Cellar/cask/<version>.

If you want pallet to maintain your Cask file automatically as you install and delete packages using Emacs' built-in package-management, enable pallet-mode by calling (pallet-mode t). You can enable or disable pallet-mode at any time by interactively calling pallet-mode (M-x pallet-mode).

##Ignoring a section of your Cask file If you prefer to have Pallet ignore part of your Cask file (e.g. so you can use Cask's VC dependencies), use the ;;;pallet-ignore comment. Pallet will ignore any text after this comment.

(source melpa)
(depends-on "s")
;;;pallet-ignore
(depends-on "newlisp" :git
"https://github.com/coldnew/newlisp-mode.git")

##Contributing Contributions to pallet are very welcome.

Fork and clone the repo, then run git submodule update --init, which will install el.mk.

###Simple testing Install Cask.

Then run cask install to install development dependencies. You should now be able to run the tests: make test.

###Complete testing The pallet dev setup includes a Vagrantfile, which allows pallet to be tested against a selection of recent Emacs releases.

Having installed Vagrant, add the necessary box by running:

vagrant box add trusty-server \
https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/vagrant/trusty/current/trusty-server-cloudimg-i386-vagrant-disk1.box

Then run vagrant up. This may take a while, as several versions of Emacs may be downloaded and installed from source.

Shell into the vm by running vagrant ssh, and run the tests using ./test_all.sh. This will run the complete test suite against all installed Emacs versions.

###Pull requests Any new feature or fix should be covered by tests -- see the files in /test for guidance on how to write your own. When you've created your feature or fix, make a pull request against master in this repo.

hectordom/pallet