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Comment by eanzenberg | Hacker News Reader

I use emacs, have a .emacs file that I carry around with me, and have no idea how to write lisp.

Well, I do have an idea how to write Lisp but I still never got the hang of Emacs Lisp in particular. (But that may have something to do with the lack of actual effort on my part, admittedly.)

Long time emacs user here with a .emacs which is highly customized and is updated by me frequently. I recently added (not sure what took me so long) code to automatically install packages which are missing (for instance, if I'm starting emacs on a new system).

Love all lisps, including elisp.

If you use use-package, you can add ":ensure t" to the configs to accomplish this same thing. If you're not using use-package, you should be :) . Example use:

    (use-package unfill
      :ensure t
      :defer t
      :commands (unfill-region unfill-paragraph unfill-toggle)
      :bind ("M-q" . unfill-toggle))

I'd recommend counting how many of your use-package forms have :ensure t and how many don't. If more have it than not, instead (setq use-package-always-ensure t).

Hey thanks, I didn't know about use-package-always-ensure.

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