After following an article from the author of Mastering Emacs, I was quite pleased with source controlling some encrypted secrets that I use in Emacs regularly, such as my elfeed feeds or IRC password.

In short, it looks like this:

A file, secrets.el.gpg that contains:

(setq secret-1 "foo"
      my/erc-password "hunter2")

From use-package declarations in init.el I would load this file:

(use-package erc
  :config (load-library "/path/to/secrets.el.gpg"))
  
(use-package elfeed
  :config (load-library "/path/to/secrets.el.gpg"))

...

Of course, having to copy this line was disgusting me as I iteratively and obsessively try to improve my Emacs config.

I decided that I would attempt to define a local package and somehow load it as a "dependency" of other packages.

;; didn't work
(use-package my-secrets
  :ensure nil
  :load-path "./secrets.el.gpg")

The above didn't work, most likely because it isn't an actual package, even when I added (provide 'my-secrets) to the bottom of the encrypted file.

I'm not sure if this is the best solution, but it works and is nicer than having to call load-library in each package's :config.

First, I made a simple wrapper package - .emacs.d/lisp/my-secrets.el (in my load-path) that just calls that frequently copy-pasted line:

(load-library (expand-file-name "secrets.el.gpg" user-emacs-directory))
(provide 'my-secrets)

(use-package my-secrets
  :ensure nil)

After some digging in the use-package source, since this it was undocumented, I found there is a keyword :load which seems to do exactly what I want.

Now, in all dependent packages, I can specify:

(use-package erc
  :load my-secrets
  :custom (erc-password my/erc-secret)
  ...)

(use-package elfeed
  :load my-secrets
  :custom (elfeed-feeds my/elfeed-feeds)
  ...)

A small improvement, but satisfying and feels more idiomatic.

Maybe some elisp wizards know how to improve this even further, or know a better way!