Why can't I boot Emacs succesfully with this EXWM configuration in my init file?

Question

I have been using Emacs for the last 5 months. However, tiling window managers is totally a new topic for me. This includes EXWM.

Since I am already somewhat familiar with Emacs, I have been trying some tutorials about EXWM. After logging out on Ubuntu and toggling EXWM for the new log, I am able to see a new environment with only emacs being loaded.

Ok. The problem starts when I try inserting this tiny tweak in my .emacs:

(use-package exwm
             :ensure t
             :config
             (require 'exwm-config)
             (exwm-config-default))

After the new edition being saved, logging out again, and choosing EXWM for the new log, Emacs now has an odd behavior showing the following error message:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function use-package)
(use-package exwm :ensure t :config (require (quote exwm-config)) (exwm-config-default))
eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "/home/pedro/.emacs" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer position 9029
load-with-code-conversion("/home/pedro/.emacs" "/home/pedro/.emacs" t t)
load("~/.emacs" t t)
#f(compiled-function () #<bytecode 0x1e0f4d>)()
command-line()
normal-top-level()

Why is this happening? How can I fix this?

My whole .emacs file can be seen here.

Answer 1

You’re using use-package, but you didn’t set it up correctly. See the Getting Started instructions in the README.

For completeness, I will mirror the first step of those instructions here:

;; This is only needed once, near the top of the file
(eval-when-compile
  ;; Following line is not needed if use-package.el is in ~/.emacs.d
  (add-to-list 'load-path "<path where use-package is installed>")
  (require 'use-package))

(use-package foo)

You can see how it first loads the use-package package, and only then uses it.