Emacs: Denote is becoming many packages

In February I announced the plan to reorganise the Denote project into “core” and “extensions”: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2025-02-11-emacs-splitting-denote-many-packages/. In essence, Denote is a file-naming scheme: you create new files and/or rename existing ones (of any file type). Having that naming scheme empowers you to retrieve stuff more easily without the need for advanced tooling.

Though it turns out we can do a lot of useful things on top of this simple-yet-powerful idea: custom Dired listings, Org dynamic blocks, sequence notes, journaling, and many more. Having a clear separation between core and extensions makes it easier for us to implement all the features we want without worrying that the main package is becoming bloated.

Concretely, much of the functionality that was part of the denote package will now be provided by other packages. To this end, I just made a change to the official elpa.git repository:

commit f23ff49fb8df22390fe139b432f763860a354175
Author: Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com>
Date:   Fri Mar 14 07:14:55 2025 +0200

  * elpa-packages (denote-journal, denote-markdown, denote-org, denote-sequence, denote-silo): Add new packages

 elpa-packages | 10 ++++++++++
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

Finalising the reorganisation of Denote

What remains to be done is for me to merge the reorganise-denote branch of denote.git into main. I will do this as soon as the new packages are indexed on GNU ELPA (maybe later today or tomorrow).

Users of the GNU ELPA package will not be affected immediately. Those who build from source will, however, have to take action.

Expect breaking changes

Users will experience breaking changes when they update to the new denote package: functionality will be missing. In principle, all those should be easy to fix: install the appropriate new package and rename the functions/variables in your configuration accordingly. In detail:

The file denote-journal-extras.el becomes the package denote-journal. In your configuration replace denote-journal-extras with denote-journal.
The file denote-org-extras.el (Org dynamic blocks and related) becomes the package denote-org. In your configuration replace denote-org-extras with denote-org.
The file denote-silo-extras.el becomes the package denote-silo. In your configuration replace denote-silo-extras with denote-silo.

Additionally, the files that were in development but never made it as part of a formal release, namely, denote-md-extras.el and denote-sequence.el, will debut as their own packages: denote-markdown and denote-sequence, respectively.

You are welcome to ask me any questions

I am reluctant to introduce breaking changes, though this has to be done for the long-term wellness of the project. If you have any questions, please contact me directly or open an issue on the GitHub repository. I am happy to help you.

A concerted release cadence

All new packages are marked as version 0.0.0, which means that only those who track GNU-devel ELPA (or build from source) will notice them. The formal release will coincide with the new version of denote (4.0.0), which I expect to publish some time in April or May 2025.