Elfeed-org fails to populate elfeed-feeds variable when (use-package elfeed-org :defer t)

[stottm]

There are a lot of people instructing newbies to defer loading of all packages. That is bad advice. I have discovered an issue described below that could be considered user configuration error. This is not a bug. However, this behavior should be documented in the README at least. Add a recommended use-package configuration for elfeed & elfeed-org.

While you can defer load elfeed itself, if you attempt to also defer load elfeed-org, it will not populate the variable elfeed-feeds with the org file listing of feeds which means elfeed cannot update the feeds as it cannot see the feeds.

Turning off deferral on elfeed-org resulted in increased start times but resolved the problem with elfeed not updating feeds. Re-examining use-package docs and reviewing Prot's recent use-package video, I've come up with a solution.

Utilizing the following works for me (I am no expert) and reduced startup time for elfeed-org from 0.42 to 0.01 (YMMV) as measured by use-package-report and resulted in an overall reduced startup time of approximately a tenth of a second (every little bit counts towards the total).

(use-package elfeed
	:defer t
	:bind
	("C-c e" . elfeed))

(use-package elfeed-org
	:after (elfeed)
	:config
	(elfeed-org)
	(setq rmh-elfeed-org-files (list "~/.config/emacs/elfeed.org")))

You can enable use-package statistics in your init.el so you can benchmark load times of packages.

(setq use-package-compute-statistics t) ;; Review metrics M-x use-package-report

You can also enable printing the Emacs load time at every startup.

;; Reset variables, and new startup message
(add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook
	(lambda ()
	;; Reset the file handler list
	(setq file-name-handler-alist pure-file-name-handler-alist)
	;; Reset garbage collection
	(setq gc-cons-threshold 2000000)
	;; Startup time message
	(message (format "Emacs ready in %.5f seconds with %d garbage collections."
	 	   (float-time (time-subtract after-init-time before-init-time))
		   gcs-done))))

[Thaodan]

Should the order be the other way around? :after makes so that the block gets evaluated when but not always before the configuration of either has been loaded.
Also defer is redundant when bind is used as bind already enables lazy loading.

[stottm]

Technically, you are correct on the binds enabling lazy loading. I prefer to be explicit, as the human, who will not remember that use-package eliminates syntax in favor of documented defaults. If you've got an optimized Elisp use-package configuration; please share.

[Thaodan]

I had a similar issue with my Emms setup. I'm using Emms with MPD. The Emms-mpd requires to enable the caching setting. I enable caching in the Emms use-package block. When I had :after emms in the use-package emms-mpd I got the error caching not being enabled when I had :after emms and :after emms-cache in the use-package emms-mpd there I got errors about caching not being enabled even thou it was. The point is that your settings are not applied because the use-package block for the maipackage isn't evaluated in my instance, in this instance it is the other way around. elfeed-org should be initialized before the elfeed keybind shold be called so it is activated when you open Elfeed. Also you gave :after t in Elfeed which is redundant. Using :bind already enables deferred loading, check if that could cause issues.