As part of this, I want to get my .emacs under version control and shared between computers so I have the same settings everywhere. Is there a good way to do that with Emacs packages installed through MELPA/ELPA?
When you setup your `init.el` you can call `(package-install x)` and if the package is already installed it'll do nothing but just make sure it's there.
If you wanted the whole thing figured out ahead of time I recommend using Spacemacs[1]
[0]: https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport [1]: http://spacemacs.org
Spacemacs looks cool. I have so many years of emacs keybindings that I'd have to turn that off, but I really like the look of what they're building.
Eventually I switched to evil-mode and I rarely use most of my old keybindings, but I still keep them around!
I wonder if it can handle dependencies like req-package https://github.com/edvorg/req-package
A bunch of (mjhoy/require-package 'package-name) are run on init, and if the package isn't present it's installed. This has worked pretty well for me for keeping my mac and my linux emacs in sync.
Look into use-package for a lot more control over how packages are loaded, as mentioned in another comment.
I've been using spacemacs at work, and while I absolutely love its layers, I really miss prelude. Something which combined the stability and sanity of prelude with the layers of spacemacs would be just about heaven on earth.