How can I disable a package or a group of packages without the require statement?

Question

My entire Emacs configuration is in one file named "init.el". The folding and unfolding is achieved with the outshine package.

I would like to share my config with some of my colleagues and I would like to provide them the ability to disable certain features such as elfeed, emms, etc..

Because I do not use a split (multiple) file approach, I'm not able to just comment out a (require 'emms) line.

I was thinking in having a variable defined at the beginning of the file which they can set to nil or t. Even though my method works (the one you see in the image below) I'm not sure if wrapping the use-package blocks inside a conditional is the right way to do it.

use-package comes with a :disabled option but that only disables one package. For someone who is not skilled with Emacs and requiring him to add all those :disabled keywords manually for each package is not optimal.

I would be grateful for any suggestion.

Answer 1

I am not sure how things worked on Emacs version < 29. But I have a very similar literal config file, where I am slowly trying to 'create' a 'lightweight' Spacemacs alternative (or more a Spacemacs complementary for easy debugging/testing. Only tested on Emacs 30 b.t.w., but I am almost sure it should work just fine also on Emacs 29).

You can find it here.

The file currently is not for public use (otherwise you probably have to comment out some sections). But anyway, I can explain how it works.

So, when tangling the org-file, whole sections can be excluded by commenting out the relevant sections, as explained in under the 'Usage info' section.

The first line of the file makes sure that the file gets tangled on save automatically.

Then, the first thing I do is to define a use function that installs a package if not installed yet, and then activates it.

For it to work correctly, I have the line:

(setq package-enable-at-startup nil)

in my early-init.el file.

Subsequently, I can include packages by just adding a

(use 'package-name)

to any of the code blocks.

Finally, I can provide all layers which I have placed under the section modules (it's not real layers, but it is a somewhat similar concept) in a single org file, and users can (de)activate it by (un)commenting some relevant section.

Of course, this has advantages and disadvantages compared to the real Spacemacs config. The main advanatage is that I can easily 'deactivate' layers, without them (and all their packages) getting uninstalled. And also, of course, there are no 'hidden/mystery' configurations inside the org/el file(s) (which makes it a good start for debugging/development).

P.S. Personally, I think I like this design better than the heavily preconfigured Doom/Spacemacs distributions. But I must add that I am a very lightweight user. If I would like to use a fully configured IDE, I might still head for Spacemacs (or maybe not... I am still exploring. In the end, this might become a community configured init (template) file, or it might not. Let's see where it goes...).