Use system-installed package with spacemacs that depends on MELPA packages

Question

How can I include a package that is available locally on my system that depends on the string library s with spacemacs?

I have an company internal package that adds functionality to magit available at /usr/share/emacs-config/neat-tool.el

neat-tool.el is something like:

;;; neat-tool.el --- Use neat tool

(require 'magit)
(require 's)
(magit-define-popup-action 'magit-dispatch-popup ?x
   "Neat commands"
   'neat-commands-popup)

I have a custom layer called my-layer with a packages.el of:

(defvar my-layer-packages
  '((neat-tool
     :location (recipe
                :fetcher url
                :url "file:///usr/share/emacs-config/neat-tool.el"))))

(defun my-layer/neat-tool ()
  "Init neat-tool."
  (use-package neat-tool
    :defer t
    :init
    (with-eval-after-load 'magit
      (require 'neat-tool))
    ))

Unfortunately, this fails with Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, s. s is correctly installed and up to date in ~/.emacs.d/elpa

I could wrap another with-eval-after-load in the :init, but that seems messy. Is there a better way to declare the dependency on s?

Answer 1

Did you add s to dotspacemacs-additional-packages in your init file? If so, require should find it as emacs is not doing relative loading (like e.g. npm).