# el-get: Managing and Installing Emacs Packages

DevFeed: [el-get: Managing and Installing Emacs Packages](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/el-get-34382.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://tapoueh.org/blog/2010/08/el-get/>)

Author: Dimitri Fontaine PostgreSQL Major Contributor; Author

Published: 2010-08-04T20:30:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Dimitri Fontaine](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/dimitri-fontaine.md>)

Topics: [Emacs](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/emacs.md>), [Lisp](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/lisp.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Tool](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tool.md>)

Tags: [documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/documentation.md>), [emacs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/emacs.md>), [emacs-lisp](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/emacs-lisp.md>), [packages](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/packages.md>), [tool](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tool.md>)

## AI overview

The article introduces el-get as a way to maintain a central, readable list of Emacs packages, their sources, and installation details. It explains that el-get can check whether packages are installed and install or configure them, including package loading and feature management.

## Source excerpt

I've been using emacs for a long time, and a long time it took me to consider learning Emacs Lisp. Before that, I didn't trust my level of understanding enough to be comfortable in managing my setup efficiently. One of the main problems of setting up Emacs is that not only you tend to accumulate so many tricks from EmacsWiki and blog posts that your .emacs has to grow to a full ~/.emacs.d/ directory (starting at ~/.emacs.d/init.el), but also you finally depend on several librairies of code you're not authoring nor maintaining. Let's call them packages.