Back in March, I blogged about installing ELPA in Emacs 23. At the time I pointed to a page by Xah Lee on how to do this. Now that Emacs 24 is out it’s worthwhile revisiting the Emacs package system. In Emacs 24, ELPA is built in so all that’s necessary is to set the repositories that you want to get packages from.
Again, Xah Lee has us covered with an updated page. If you’ve recently updated to Emacs 24 and don’t know about ELPA, you should take a look at Lee’s page about it. He’s got all the information on how to use it and how to upgrade from ELPA for Emacs 23 to ELPA for Emacs 24. Once you get ELPA set up, everything is much easier. You can download packages and have them available without having to worry about setting up paths or special directories. It’s easy to update and delete packages so there’s no need to worry about checking in with a package’s home page to see if there’s an update—ELPA will tell you.
If you’re an Emacs user and aren’t using ELPA you’re making your life more difficult than it has to be. Seriously, check out Lee’s page and get ELPA up and running. It will make your life a lot better.