6

I use DropBox to share my .emacs and .emacs.d with the various machines I use. I setup helm using emacs on my mac but now I'm having issues when opening emacs on my Linux box:

Warning (emacs): Unable to activate package `helm'.
Required package `emacs-24' is unavailable
Warning (emacs): Unable to activate package `helm'.
Required package `emacs-24' is unavailable
Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading `/home/gibson/.emacs':

File error: Cannot open load file, helm

To ensure normal operation, you should investigate and remove the 
cause of the error in your initialization file.  Start Emacs 
with the `--debug-init' option to view a complete error backtrace.
Warning (emacs): Unable to activate package `helm'.
Required package `emacs-24' is unavailable

I also get "Package 'emacs-24' is unavailable" when I try to M-x package-install helm

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    Maybe try this stackoverflow.com/questions/16177807/…
    – nanny
    Commented Apr 14, 2015 at 23:34
  • That did it. Thanks. I upvoted your comment, but I don't know how to mark a question as answered.
    – Mike
    Commented Apr 15, 2015 at 1:27
  • Mike: As we can't close questions as duplicates if the duplicate is on a different site, nanny (or yourself) could add an Answer with the same information, and you can then mark that answer as Accepted.
    – phils
    Commented Apr 15, 2015 at 1:53
  • @phils Sure, that sounds good.
    – nanny
    Commented Apr 15, 2015 at 12:45

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8

The reason for this can be a lingering old version of package.el in your load path. package.el was officially included in GNU Emacs 24, and the downloadable file for earlier Emacs versions doesn't support dependencies on built-in packages (emacs-24.1 is considered a built-in package here).

Type M-x locate-library RET package to find where Emacs is getting its package.el from. The path it shows should end with lisp/emacs-lisp/package.elc. If it doesn't, try getting rid of the indicated file (or changing the load path so Emacs doesn't find it).

From: https://stackoverflow.com/q/16177807/1279369

Improve this answer
1
  • I have the questioner's problem, and just to whoever's interested, this answer didn't work for me. My package matches the given string. I don't say this as a complaint but just an FYI that there must be multiple causes of this warning.
    – Swiss Frank
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 4:28

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.