How to automatically install Emacs packages by specifying a list of package names?

emacs installation package
RNA picture RNA · Apr 10, 2012 · Viewed 39.3k times · Source

I am using package to manage my Emacs extensions. In order to synchronize my Emacs settings on different computers, I'd like a way to specify a list of package names in .emacs file and then package could automatically search and install the packages, so that I don't need to install them manually by calling M-x package-list-packages. How to do that?

Answer

Nicolas Dudebout picture Nicolas Dudebout · Apr 10, 2012 
; list the packages you want
(setq package-list '(package1 package2))

; list the repositories containing them
(setq package-archives '(("elpa" . "http://tromey.com/elpa/")
                         ("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
                         ("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/")))

; activate all the packages (in particular autoloads)
(package-initialize)

; fetch the list of packages available 
(unless package-archive-contents
  (package-refresh-contents))

; install the missing packages
(dolist (package package-list)
  (unless (package-installed-p package)
    (package-install package)))

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