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+++
description = "Working out which package archives I'm using"
title = "Emacs Package Archive Statistics"
date = 2014-07-19T13:19:54Z
[taxonomies]
tags = ["emacs"]
+++
I use [cask][] for managing the dependencies of my Emacs
configuration. Whenever I opened my `Cask` file, I wondered if I
really was using all the sources I had defined:
```lisp
(source gnu)
(source marmalade)
(source melpa)
(source melpa-stable)
(source org)
```
It seemed quite strange that we have so many package repositories in
the Emacs world and I'm not even using all of them. I find this state
less than ideal, much as
[Jorgen Schäfer details][state of emacs package archives]. My ideal
package repository would be once that works with VCS releases, mostly
because it's a much simpler process to work with than having to sign
up to yet another website just to upload a package, then ensure it's
kept up-to-date on every release.
As such, I prefer the concepts behing [MELPA][] and [MELPA Stable][] to
those of [Marmalade][]. [GNU ELPA][] doesn't appear to allow any
submissions and [org][org archive] is specific to [org-mode]. I've
also noticed that many packages I find and use are on github and so
work with the [MELPA][] system. However, I don't like [MELPA's][MELPA]
versioning: it just gets the latest code and puts the build date in
the version, meaning that packages could break at any time.
So, ideally I would use [MELPA Stable][] as much as possible and reduce my
usage of [Marmalade][] and [MELPA][]. [GNU ELPA][] doesn't appear to have
many packages, but I wasn't sure if I was using any.
I couldn't see the information listed in the `*Packages*` buffer, so I
decided to try to figure out how to generate some usage statistics.
I found [how to get a list of installed packages][], but that just gives
a list:
```lisp
(ace-jump-mode ag auto-compile auto-indent-mode autopair ...)
```
I needed to get more information about those packages. I looked at
where `list-packages` gets that information from. It seems that
`package-archive-contents` is a list of cons cells:
```lisp
(org-plus-contrib .
[(20140714)
nil "Outline-based notes management and organizer" tar "org"])
```
Then created a function to loop over the contents of
`package-activated-list`, retrieving the corresponding contents of
`package-archive-contents`:
```lisp
(defun package-list-installed ()
(loop for pkg in package-activated-list
collect (assq pkg package-archive-contents)))
```
This generates a list of arrays from `package-archive-contents`.
There are some helper functions in package.el such as
`package-desc-kind`. `package-desc-archive` was exactly what I
needed. I happened to be using a pretest version of Emacs at the time
and didn't know that it's not in 24.3, so I just made sure it was defined:
```lisp
(if (not (fboundp #'package-desc-archive))
(defsubst package-desc-archive (desc)
(aref desc (1- (length desc)))))
```
Weirdly, some of the arrays (seemingly the ones from the
[org archive][]) had a different length, but the repository/archive was
always the last element, which is why I used `(1- (length ))` and not
a constant, like the other `package-desc-*` functions.
To generate a list of statistics, I just needed to loop over the
installed packages from `package-list-installed` and update a count
for each archive:
```lisp
(defun package-archive-stats ()
(let ((archives (makehash))
(assoc '()))
(dolist (arc package-archives)
(puthash (car arc) 0 archives))
(maphash (lambda (k v)
(setq assoc (cons (cons k v) assoc)))
(dolist (pkg (-filter #'identity (package-list-installed)) archives)
(let ((pkg-arc (package-desc-archive (cdr pkg))))
(incf (gethash pkg-arc archives)))))
assoc))
```
Running this gives a list of cons cells:
```lisp
(("gnu" . 0)
("org" . 1)
("melpa-stable" . 2)
("melpa" . 106)
("marmalade" . 1))
```
I wrapped it in an interactive function so that I could check the
numbers quickly:
```lisp
(defun package-show-archive-stats ()
(interactive)
(message "%s" (package-archive-stats)))
```
With that, I removed `(source gnu)` from my `Cask` file. Now I had
another question. What package was installed from [marmalade][]? In
the lisp fashion, I created yet another function:
```lisp
(defun package-show-installed-from-archive (archive)
(interactive (list (helm-comp-read "Archive: " (mapcar #'car package-archives)
:must-match t)))
(let ((from-arc (mapcar #'car
(--filter (equalp (package-desc-archive (cdr it)) archive)
(package-list-installed)))))
(if (called-interactively-p)
(message "%s" from-arc)
from-arc)))
```
(Non-helm users can replace `helm-comp-read` with
`ido-completing-read` or similar)
Running this with the argument `"marmalade"` gives:
```lisp
(php-extras)
```
I checked on [MELPA Stable][] and [MELPA][], but it's not available
there. Given that I use [php-extras][] quite a bit at work, I can't remove
[marmalade][] just yet. However, as it's a git repository, it should be
easy for me to create a recipe for MELPA. Then I can remove marmalade
from my [cask][] configuration. Hooray for simplification!
Hopefully, packaging in Emacs will become simpler in the future.
There are some interesting things in 24.4 like pinning packages to a
repository, which would allow [MELPA Stable][] to be used even when
[MELPA][] defines the same package with a higher "version".
[cask]: https://github.com/cask/cask/
[state of emacs package archives]: http://blog.jorgenschaefer.de/2014/06/the-sorry-state-of-emacs-lisp-package.html
[marmalade]: http://marmalade-repo.org/
[GNU ELPA]: http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/
[MELPA]: http://hiddencameras.milkbox.net/
[MELPA Stable]: http://melpa-stable.milkbox.net/
[org archive]: http://orgmode.org/elpa.html
[how to get a list of installed packages]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13866848/how-to-save-a-list-of-all-the-installed-packages-in-emacs-24
[php-extras]: https://github.com/arnested/php-extras
[org-mode]: http://orgmode.org/
|