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I want to update Emacs from the command line so I created the following function to help with this:

;;; update.el -- Update Emacs from the command line

(defun update-emacs ()
  "Update Emacs without interaction, to be used from the command line."
  (defun perform-emacs-update ()
    (switch-to-buffer "*Packages*")
    (declare-function package-menu-mark-upgrades "package.el.gz")
    (declare-function package-menu-execute "package.el.gz")
    (package-menu-mark-upgrades)
    (package-menu-execute t))
  (add-hook 'package--post-download-archives-hook 'perform-emacs-update)
  (package-list-packages))

(provide 'update-emacs)

Then I run Emacs with these parameters:

$ emacs --batch --eval '(load "~/.emacs.d/update.el")' --eval '(update-emacs)'

However it doesn't run the hook for some reason. I get this output instead

Loading ~/.emacs.d/update.el (source)... Setting ‘package-selected-packages’ temporarily since "emacs -q" would overwrite customizations

This code works fine when I execute it from an already running Emacs. How can I get it to run in batch mode?

1 Answer 1

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The documentation gives the answer.

Don't run this hook directly. It is meant to be run as part of package--update-downloads-in-progress.

As a rule, -- in the name is an indication that it's a private unit not intended to be used by us mere mortals.

If you collect your packages to upgrade into a list, then a function like this should work.

(dolist (p my-packages)
      (when (not (package-installed-p p))
        (package-install p)))
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  • I see, I did not realize that about -- thanks for the tip. Also, concerning "If you collect your packages to upgrade into a list", that is the part I was trying to get from the private function. Any idea how to get the list of packages that need to be updated? Nov 10, 2021 at 1:17

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