This extension now resides within the official use-package distribution.

You’re using use-package to manage your Emacs environment. Well played. Maybe you then want to ensure related system binary packages exist along side of these package/feature declarations? Oh nice, me too.

• Obviously you need to be using use-package.

• Make sure your exec-path is cognisant of all binary package names that you would like to ensure exist. exec-path-from-shell is a good way to do this.

• This package leverages system-packages to provide the default install behavior for different systems. If you need to customize this beforehand, you may.

Note: This is only available on MELPA.

(use-package use-package-ensure-system-package
  :ensure t)

Here’s an example:

(use-package rg
  :ensure t
  :ensure-system-package rg
  :chords (":G" . rg-projecet))

This will expect a global binary package to exist called rg. If it does not, it will use your system package manager to attempt an install of a binary by the same name asyncronously. For example, for most macOS users it would call: brew install rg.

Good default stuff. What if you want to customize the install command?

(use-package tern
  :ensure t
  :ensure-system-package (tern . "npm i -g tern"))

:ensure-system-package can take a cons. In that case, its cdr should be a string that will get piped to (async-shell-command) to install the darn thing if it doesn’t exist.

Also you may also pass in a list of cons-es in the same format:

(use-package ruby-mode
  :ensure-system-package
  ((rubocop     . "gem install rubocop")
   (ruby-lint   . "gem install ruby-lint")
   (ripper-tags . "gem install ripper-tags")
   (pry         . "gem install pry")))

• Better compatibility with the :defer and :defer-install keywords.