Cask can be likened to venv or maven for Emacs Lisp development, although, as with all things emacs, is decidedly less sophisticated (but no less arcane).

Cask provisions dependencies within a sandbox via a user-defined “Cask” file analogous to requirements-dev.txt or pom.xml.

Cask does not absolve you of having to learn emacs’s command flags. Cask only constructs the sandbox, one for each version of emacs you choose to test.

git clone https://github.com/cask/cask
make -C cask install

With just this baseline “Cask” file, you can run most of the commands described in https://cask.readthedocs.io.

(source gnu)
(source melpa)
(package-file "your-main-file.el")

The EMACS environment variable governs which emacs binary to test. For example, the following runs ert tests under an older emacs:

EMACS=emacs-25.3 cask emacs --batch -l mytest.el -f ert-run-tests-batch

We have deprecated the cask exec invocation, and consequently no longer recommend cask exec ert-runner nor cask exec ecukes .

Egregious boilerplate follows:

export EMACS ?= $(shell command -v emacs 2>/dev/null)
CASK_DIR := $(shell cask package-directory)
$(CASK_DIR): Cask
	cask install
	@touch $(CASK_DIR)
.PHONY: cask
cask: $(CASK_DIR)
.PHONY: compile
compile: cask
	cask emacs -batch -L . -L test \
	  -f batch-byte-compile $$(cask files); \
	  (ret=$$? ; cask clean-elc && exit $$ret)
.PHONY: test
test: compile
	cask emacs --batch -L . -L test -l readme-test -f ert-run-tests-batch

Cask, in conjunction with setup-emacs, is commonly used in Github Actions. Egregious boilerplate follows:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        emacs-version:
          - 26.3
          - 27.2
          - 28.2
          - 29.2
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: purcell/setup-emacs@master
        with:
          version: ${{ matrix.emacs-version }}
      - uses: actions/cache@v4
        id: cache-cask-packages
        with:
          path: .cask
          key: cache-cask-packages-000
      - uses: actions/cache@v4
        id: cache-cask-executable
        with:
          path: ~/.cask
          key: cache-cask-executable-000
      - uses: cask/setup-cask@master
        if: steps.cache-cask-executable.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
        with:
          version: snapshot
      - run: echo "$HOME/.cask/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH

Why does this shit never work?

Bitrot and weak hacks, primarily. Always try rm -rf ~/.emacs.d/.cask since we’re liable to make backwards-incompatible changes.

Why does this utterly fail on Windows?

If you use emacs on Windows, you’re not doing it right. But for a sufficiently motivated Powershell bro, it would not be hard to finesse the Makefile for a typical Windows environment.

Why does install “not know where to install”?

After assaying cross-platform schemes like systemd-path and XDG_DATA_HOME to figure out a suitable install directory, Cask resorts to the old, unspoken standbys of ~/.local/bin and ~/bin. If neither of those are present, then make install gives up with that error. I couldn’t determine a more standard method last I asked stackoverflow.com. To fix this error, you can manually specify the install directory like this - DESTDIR="$HOME/path/to/install/dir" make install.

Why is everything you say inconsistent with cask.readthedocs.io?

I would disregard nearly everything at cask.readthedocs.io, especially the Quickstart page. In particular, I would not require cask in your dot.emacs since cask is now largely a command-line tool independent of whatever you do within emacs. If you are calling cask-initialize in your dot.emacs or harken back to the bygone era of pallet, I’m afraid you’re on your own.

Doesn’t Cask make things more complicated?

Yes, because it forces you to test your package under multiple versions of emacs. Most packages don’t do any testing at all, which is why emacs has lost credibility with the computing public.