Development elisp package

Question

I want to start developing emacs packages. I would like to use cask, so I did:

$ cask init --dev

It worked well, and generated the Cask file

tree -La 1 
.
├── .git
├── .gitignore
├── Cask
└── README.org    

Then when I try cask install, I always get the same error:

cask install                                                                  
Opening input file: No such file or directory, /Users/toni/learn/emacs/yamelcs/TODO

If I created the TODO file I get:

cask install
Package lacks a file header in file TODO

I do not know what to do next

Answer 1

You're supposed to fill in the "TODO" in the Cask file with the actual package file of your project.

Answer 2

Cask is complaining that a file called TODO is missing the Emacs documentation header and footer containing the file's metadata.

Emacs has a very convenient command which helps with generating those header and footer comments: M-x checkdoc.

Call this command in your file and complete the questions in the minibuffer until it's all done. Save the file and run Cask again.

This should resolve the problem.

---

Besides creating the documentation header and footer checkdoc is also capable of checking the grammar in the documentation string of your elisp functions. This isn't a real spell checker and only helps writing documentation closer to Emacs' development guidelines.