Cask without pallet

Question

At some point, I found a web page that described using Cask and Pallet to configure emacs. I got that working, and life was good. I recently upgraded my version of Cask to 0.9.0, and now I find this in cask.el:

(define-obsolete-function-alias 'cask-initialize nil "22.1"
  "In particular, I would not =require cask= in your dot.emacs
since cask is now largely a command-line tool independent of
whatever you do within emacs.  If you are calling
=cask-initialize= in your dot.emacs or harken back to the bygone
era of [[https://github.com/rdallasgray/pallet][pallet]], I'm
afraid you're on your own.")

My .emacs does indeed have (require 'cask "/path/to/cask.el") (cask-initialize))

Given that the most recent change in pallet is 6 years ago, it's clear that I've fallen behind current practices. However, when I search for things like "emacs cask without pallet", all I find is advice on how to configure emacs with cask and pallet.

I was able to get things working with

(let* ((cask-source-list '("~/.cask/cask.el" "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/cask/cask.el"))
       (cask-source (cl-find-if #'file-exists-p cask-source-list)))
  (when cask-source
    (require 'cask cask-source)
    (cask--initialize)))

(Note the double dash in the initialize call.) However, since the comment specifically advises against requiring cask, I feel this is still not current best practice.

What is the current best practice for managing packages?

I am happy with either "go to this web page, which explains it" or "add these three lines to the start of your .emacs".

If the answer is "don't use cask; use this [link here] instead", that also works, especially if there is a simple way to migrate my installed packages to the new system.

Answer 1

Cask is no longer intended to be package management tool, it's more of a bundler for dependency management. Think Python virtual environments. Or for a developer to test an Emacs package with different combinations of Emacs and dependent packages, as in a CI environment. There's a known issue with respect to the docs, and they mention it in the faq.

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Emacs has it's own package manager package.el. It's basic but gets the job done. The afore mentioned Elpaca is a big improvement.

El-get is a popular option and has been around a while. It uses package.el on its backend. I have no experience with it though.

use-package is a macro to help you configure and load packages in your ~/.emacs.d/init.el, and uses package.el on the backend too. It's authored by one of the Emacs maintainers, who claims it's "not a package manager".

straight.el is a package manager built on top of use-package.

leaf.el "leaf.el is yet another use-package". Reading about it, it sounds like a re-implemented use-package with similar keywords and semantics. Could be an interesting option for current users of use-package.