My .emacs configuration, in a state of constant flux.

It seems that emacsforosx doesn't automatically create/install a ~/.terminfo file, which should contain info about the terminal type declaration (not sure on the terminology for that), like TERM='xterm-256color'. Emacs needs eterm-color, but you'll need to create the necessary files using the following command:

tic -o ~/.terminfo /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/etc/e/eterm-color.ti

• robe - code navigation, doc and completion, for rails?

• Need to make sure the to the cask.el file is correct. will vary depending on how you installed Cask: if you installed via the curl method, it is likely to be ~/.cask; if you installed via Homebrew, it is likely to be /usr/local/Cellar/cask/.
• seems like you also need to call package-install interactively at least once before the code in init.d/02_packageRepos.el will be able to find the palletpackage. **TODO** Need to look into why this is the case: does callingpackage-install` interactively do something different than calling it from elisp?