Unable to upgrade prelude or prelude packages on emacs 26.0.91 (wrong type argument)

[robert-uhl]

Whenever I execute prelude-update or prelude-update-packages, I get a message similar to the following:

helm-M-x: Wrong type argument: epl--package-desc-p, #s(package-desc zop-to-char (20160212 754) "A replacement of zap-to-char." ((cl-lib (0 5))) nil nil "/home/buhl/.emacs.d/elpa/zop-to-char-20160212.754" ((:url . "https://github.com/thierryvolpiatto/zop-to-char") (:commit . "816ea90337db0545a2f0a5079f4d7b3a2822af7d")) nil)

I did try removing that particular package, but it's just reinstalled.

This is on emacs 26.0.91.

[tvoran]

FWIW, with emacs 26.1, I was able to get around this by

• running git pull in my prelude install directory (~/.emacs.d/)
• removing all the .elc files (find ~/.emacs.d -name "*.elc" | xargs rm -v)
• restarting emacs

[albertsj1]

@tvoran Thanks for mentioning that. I always forget that deleting all of the .elc files is a good troubleshooting step for various strange issues and this worked for me as well.

[paulbrodersen]

Can we re-open this issue please?
I am running into a similar issue and @tvoran's solution did not seem to help (there appear to be no .elc files present in my .emacs.d folder).

prelude-update-packages results in the following error:

epl-package--from-package-desc: Wrong type argument: epl--package-desc-p, #s(package-desc zop-to-char (20160212 1554) "A replacement of zap-to-char." ((cl-lib (0 5))) nil nil "/home/paul/.emacs.d/elpa/zop-to-char-20160212.1554" ((:url . "https://github.com/thierryvolpiatto/zop-to-char") (:maintainer "Thierry Volpiatto" . "[email protected]") (:authors ("Thierry Volpiatto" . "[email protected]")) (:commit . "00152aa666354b27e56e20565f186b363afa0dce")) nil)

If I delete the package, the next package in the queue (in my case zenburn-theme) throws the error, so this does not seem a package-specific issue.

[paulbrodersen]

After some more poking around, I solved the issue by manually updating all packages by invoking
M-x list-packages to get the list of installed/available packages, U to mark all packages with available upgrades for upgrading, and then x to execute. After upgrading all packages, the parsing error was resolved and prelude-update-packages worked as intended.

[mxm]

I've hit the same problem and none of the above workarounds were able to resolve the issue:

helm-M-x-execute-command: Wrong type argument: epl--package-desc-p, #s(package-desc zop-to-char (20160212 1554) "A replacement of zap-to-char." ((cl-lib (0 5))) nil nil "/Users/max/.emacs.d/elpa/zop-to-char-20160212.1554" ((:url . "https://github.com/thierryvolpiatto/zop-to-char") (:maintainer "Thierry Volpiatto" . "[email protected]") (:authors ("Thierry Volpiatto" . "[email protected]")) (:commit . "816ea90337db0545a2f0a5079f4d7b3a2822af7d")) nil)

Emacs version 28.1 on latest master.

[mxm]

I've opened a new issue here since the old fix does not work anymore: #1396