:tags keyword for use-package

This library adds :tags keyword to use-package, which can be used to enable only packages that belong to certain groups. You can group packages using the keyword, and select packages to enable by setting use-package-tags-current-profile variable.

It also provides a function for enumerating packages in a file/buffer based on tags. This can be used to install packages for your init file without relying on package.el, e.g. in Nix.

Table of contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • :tags keyword for use-package
  • Extracting package names from an init file

Installation

This package is not available on MELPA yet.

Usage

:tags keyword for use-package

(require 'use-package)
(use-package use-package-tags)

;; Select packages using tags
;; This can be put in your custom-file, but it should be set
;; before you load use-package forms.
(setq use-package-tags-current-profile '(work))

;; Since it has no :tags, this package is always enabled
(use-package lsp-mode)

;; This package has a tag in the current profile, so it is enabled.
(use-package lsp-java
  ;; You wouldn't want to write Java at home (unless you are working
  ;; from home), so it doesn't have to be enabled outside of work.
  :tags (work))

;; This package has no tag in the current profile, so it is disabled.
(use-package my-game-on-emacs
  :tags (personal))

You can specify multiple tags in a :tags keyword field. If a package has at least one keyword in your current profile, it will be enabled.

Extracting package names from an init file

Another functionality provided by this package is to extract a list of packages from an initialization file. This feature is primarily targeted at Nix users. You can get a list of all packages in use-package forms in a file, or select packages using tags:

;; Get a list of packages in the current buffer by tags
(use-package-tags-select '(programming blog))

;; You can specify a file name using :from keyword
(use-package-tags-select '(programming blog)
  :from (expand-file-name "init.el" user-emacs-directory))

;; The :from argument also accepts t, which is evaluated to
;; `use-package-tags-init-files' (default: user-init-file)
(use-package-tags-select '(programming blog)
  :from t)

;; You can select all packages by passing t as the query
(use-package-tags-select t)

;; If you set :installable to t, it returns packages on the registry
;; (requires epkg.el)
(use-package-tags-select t :installable t)

You can save the result to a file:

;; Save the list of packages to packages.txt in plain text
(with-temp-buffer
  (setq buffer-file-name "packages.txt")
  (insert (use-package-tags-select t :from "init.el"
                                   :installable t
                                   :as 'lines))
  (save-buffer))

The function handles some built-in keywords of use-package to exclude packages that satisfy at least one of the following conditions:

• Having a non-nil :disabled property.
• Having an :if property that evaluates to nil.

Not all keywords are supported right now, but it can be extended to support more keywords.

This package also provides use-package-tags-collect-tags function, which returns a list of all tags in a source.