package-selected-packages is void on first usage

[mcba]

Operating System

Linux/BSD

Additional Operating System information

No response

Emacs Version

30

Emacs Configuration Details

• Native Compilation
• pGTK
• alternative package manager (use-package, straight.el, ...)

Anything else that may be related to the issue you're having?

What happened?

On a completely new emacs installation, and with the example crafted-emacs entry for init.el and no custom.el, emacs gives a void-variable error for package-selected-packages.

A workaround is to initialise package-selected-packages with something, e.g.,

(custom-set-variables
'(package-selected-packages
'(aggressive-indent)))

and then run M-x package-install-selected-packages to initialise things.

What should have happened?

crafted-emacs should check if package-selected-packages is void, and take appropriate action.

[jeffbowman]

Crafted Emacs currently expects you to setup both an early-init.el and an init.el file. (see Bootstrapping Crafted Emacs )

If you choose not to do this, at the top of your init.el file, before anything else except for comments, you should put (require 'package). Thus if you were following the example from the examples/base/ folder, and you only copied the init.el file, you would need to modify the top to look like this:

;;; init.el --- Crafted Emacs Base Example -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-

;; Copyright (C) 2023
;; SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

;; Author: System Crafters Community

;;; Commentary:

;; Base example init.el (extended from the info file).
;; Basic example of loading a module.

;;; Code:
(require 'package) ; Add this line!
...

Alternatively, if you are starting with the example files from examples/base/ then just copy both the early-init.el and init.el file so the package system is setup for you.

Your configuration is absolutely yours, so if you choose not to have an early-init.el file per our example, then you will need to update your configuration to handle loading and configuring the packaging system as you see fit.

Hope that helps :-)

[mcba]

Thanks Jeff, I entirely skipped over the section on early-init.el! The documentation at the github landing page under Getting Started just refers to updating your configuration, which I took to being init.el, and I then skipped straight to the init.el section under the more detailed Getting Started Guide.

Perhaps a couple of small documentation clarifications would help?

Anyway, thanks for your work on crafted-emacs, I find it an excellent system.

[jeffbowman]

Perhaps a couple of small documentation clarifications would help?

Certainly. Would you be interested in submitting a PR?