emacs-buttercup VS straight.el

ERT doesn't have much to help with this, but Buttercup has a number of facilities to help with controlling the environment around each test: https://github.com/jorgenschaefer/emacs-buttercup/

> (For example, when trying to test things out I haven't really found a way much better than typing into scratch, selecting code and running it while staring at messages....)

Are you talking about when you're noodling, trying to figure how things work, or actually trying to build something?

For playing around, I found that scratch works ok, but I found a better workflow.

I end up using a daily note in org-roam, with #begin_src elisp... I then tag the heading with :REFILE:ELISP: so I can always find it later. Basically evaluate everything inline within that org-babel block.

When I'm building something, or driving towards a specific goal, I use buttercup [0] to write actual unit tests. If I squint, it kinda looks like TDD.

Finally, for debugging of running elisp, take a look at edebug [1]. It's a pretty standard looking debugger (if you used something like gdb). By default emacs uses debug which is not as friendly.

[0]: https://github.com/jorgenschaefer/emacs-buttercup

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Ed...

Ok, before posting this I looked up a bit and found this and this. Buttercup seems great. Links or tips from experienced developers are welcome.

Very dated and next to useless on large complex CPP codebases. Use a language server. I recommend the straight package manager. https://github.com/radian-software/straight.el

Have you tried using straight.el or the heir-apparent Elpaca? These package managers will check out the git repo of said packages, and you can easily fork them with magit and forge. That's that I do to contribute to packages.

Thank you for your time addressing all those issues and sorry if questions were misinformed - I found your advices invaluable to understand design goals of package managers in emacs.

I used straight.el, now I use Elpaca.

Doom Emacs is not a package manager. It has a package manager, which is based on Straight.el.

I have been crafting my emacs config for about 10 years. I started with vanilla and intentionally stayed away from frameworks. About two years ago I declared config bankruptcy and went down for a rewrite using use-package and straight.

First install straight.el (https://github.com/radian-software/straight.el)

ref: https://github.com/radian-software/straight.el https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package

If you use straight and override package, you'll get a lot of your desired functionality for free. Straight's docs are excellent. I started banging away on my own setup from scratch, and while not perfect, it does what I want and the total startup time is about 1.5 seconds without doing anything to try to optimize it. If you want to see it, check it out here. Like I said, there is lots of room for improvement, but it does work for me.