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I am trying to set up emacs (on cygwin / Win10) to handle JSON.

I started with joshwnj/json-mode and was stoked to discover that emacs will now install its own dependencies from online repos. Fab stuff.

I can run M-x package-install but I notice it logs the message:

Contacting host: elpa.gnu.org:80
Failed to download ‘gnu’ archive.

And when I type in json-mode, emacs says there's no match. Is this a connection problem? Should I see an HTTP error somewhere?

joshwnj/json-mode says I need the MELPA repository set up.

According to this documentation for MELPA I need to identify if I'm using package.el (which looks good) and work out if the given lisp code is in place.

Is there a command I can run in emacs to tell me if this code is in place?

Trying to following on and ignoring that issue, I tried M-x package-list-packages and got the following error:

You can run the command ‘package-list-packages’ with M-x pa-l- RET
Waiting for refresh to finish...
Package refresh done
No packages to upgrade.
error in process sentinel: Error retrieving: http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/archive-contents (error connection-failed "failed with code 10060
" :host "elpa.gnu.org" :service 80)
error in process sentinel: Error retrieving: http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/archive-contents (error connection-failed "failed with code 10060
" :host "elpa.gnu.org" :service 80)

Is the sentinel process critical? Did the package refresh work?

What should I try next?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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It appears that 

(custom-set-variables
 '(gnutls-algorithm-priority "normal:-vers-tls1.3"))

fixes the problem.

Cf. https://stackoverflow.com/a/60638601/850781

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4
  • 1
    How did you find this out?
    – mtd
    Feb 16, 2021 at 17:53
  • 1
    @mtd: emacs-devel mailing list
    – sds
    Feb 16, 2021 at 17:55
  • 1
    thanks. FWIW, I am still seeing the reported symptom, and your fix addressing it, using emacs 27.1 (` emacs-27.1-2.fc33.x86_64`).
    – mtd
    Feb 16, 2021 at 22:07
  • fwiw it fixed it for me on "GNU Emacs 27.2 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin21.1.0, Carbon Version 165 AppKit 2113) of 2021-12-11"
    – algal
    Jan 21, 2022 at 0:32
2

Have you tried to set the package-archives variable in your configuration file?

I have added the following lines to my configuration to get packages from elpa, marmalade, and melpa:

(package-initialize)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("gnu" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/") t)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("marmalade" . "https://marmalade-repo.org/packages/") t)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t)
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  • 1
    Although I haven't checked, I assume I already have those set by default because of the error. If I do M-x package-refresh-contents I get Contacting host: elpa.gnu.org:80 Failed to download ‘gnu’ archive.
    – Adam
    Jan 8, 2018 at 13:05
  • The ELPA repository may be set up by default, but the MELPA (which you said that you needed) and Maramalde repositories won't be set up by default.
    – colelemonz
    Jan 8, 2018 at 23:59
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    Looking into the issue further, are you by chance behind a firewall? That may be blocking your connection to ELPA. Furthermore, have you installed GnuTLS? If you are on Windows, i refer you to here, and this may also be useful.
    – colelemonz
    Jan 9, 2018 at 0:02
  • I run emacs under cygwin and cygwin has gnutls - is that not enough?
    – Adam
    Jan 9, 2018 at 13:50
  • Not sure, I don't have access to a Windows box to test it.
    – colelemonz
    Jan 9, 2018 at 19:41

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